Digging
Photo by Alistair Christie-Johnston Peat in Shetland Islands In my email this week was a message from my uncle who lives in the Shetland Islands, far to the north of Scotland. He sent me this picture of his “peat bank” and wrote that, between his peat bank and his million dollar view, he has a unique kind of wealth. I sent him in return a poem by Seamus Heaney called “ Digging ” in which Heaney compares the work of his grandfather digging peat and his own work as a poet digging for the good earth with his pen. Heaney writes about the way we find meaning in our lives. His father, like his grandfather, dug ‘Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods /Over his shoulder, going down and down/ For the good turf. Digging.’ What I read in the poem is a celebration of the way we can find purpose in our lives and a humble respect from a nobel laureate for his labouring forefathers. Meaning emerges in this poem through the juxtaposition of shovel and pen. Nowhere does Heaney write ...