Seamus Heaney was a farmer's son from south Country Derry born in 1939. In 1966, Death of a Naturalist, was published. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Heaney died in 2013, aged 74. Although I was born in the city rather than the countryside I somehow relate to Heaney's poem about vivid childhood memories to do with nature. Towards the end of the poem there's a line, "I sickened, turned, and ran." I laughed when I read this it brings me back to when I was the kind of kid who frogs could make feel squeamish and paranoid, just by existing. When we studied this poem for GCSE the teacher told us about Heaney's younger brother died in an accident and as a result there are a lot of poems about "loss of innocence." I guess, to some extent this poem is about growing up and about gaining awareness of the big, bad world outside our window.I like the fact he gives us the name of his teacher (Miss Walls). It's funny how the tiny detail that his teacher is female and young and unmarried, is the right about of information. Pets tend to die young and therefor give children their first taste of bereavement. When we first did sex education at school frogs were mentioned and we all witnessed a frog being dissected in biology. The teacher using the term, "Daddy Frog" makes me smile as it reminds me of things my mother told me when I was very small. I remember before my voice broke there was a time when I was so nervous about speaking in public as I'd sometimes make a sound like a frog's croak. It's a memory that still makes me feel uncomfortable. Heaney seems compelled to use words connected to nature. Often I notice words like bogs, mud, trenches, furrows, earth - I don't mean to sound crass but this sense of him getting his hands dirty is what makes him special. Heaney once said, "The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole." I like this quote and I like to think other poets agree with him.
Text by Denni Ruskin March 2020
