The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Heaney, Seamus. “The Blackbird of Glanmore.” Poeticus, https://www.poeticous.com/seamus-heaney/the-blackbird-of-glanmore.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The Blackbird of Glanmore” is a free-verse poem that takes place in front of the poet Seamus Heaney’s home in Glanmore, County Wicklow. It draws on the natural landscape and in particular a regional superstition about the blackbird, which is echoed through the warning of a neighbour. The poet revisits a memory of his younger brother Christopher, who was killed in a road accident many years earlier, and through it takes a philosophical look at his own mortality.