Death of a Naturalist
Encyclopedia
Death of a Naturalist is a collection of poems written by Irish Nobel winner Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

. The collection was Heaney's second major published volume, and includes ideas which he had presented at meetings of The Belfast Group
The Belfast Group
The Belfast Group was a poets' workshop which was organized by Philip Hobsbaum when he moved to Belfast in October 1963 to lecture in English at Queen's University....

. It won the Cholmondeley Award
Cholmondeley Award
The Cholmondeley Award is an annual award for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966...

, the Gregory Award
Eric Gregory Award
The Eric Gregory Award is given by the Society of Authors to British poets under 30 on submission. The awards are up to a sum value of £24000 annually....

, the Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...

, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...

.

The work consists of 34 short poems and is largely concerned with childhood experiences and the formulation of adult identities, family relationships, and rural life. The collection begins with one of Heaney's best-known poems, "Digging", and includes the acclaimed "Death of a Naturalist" and "Mid-Term Break".

Poems

"Death of a Naturalist," the collection's second poem, details the exploits of a young boy collecting frogspawn from a flax-dam. The narrator remembers everything he saw and felt at those times. He then remembers his teacher telling him all about frogs in a section that speaks volumes about childhood innocence. Finally, we hear about a trip to the flax-dam that went wrong. He feels threatened by the frogs and flees. His interest in nature has gone - this is the death of a "naturalist" suggested in the poem's title. The poem makes extensive use of onomatopoeia and a simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...

 that compares the behaviour of the amphibians to warfare ("Some sat poised like mud grenades") amongst other techniques.

"Mid-Term Break" is a reflection on the death of Heaney's four-year-old brother, Christopher, while Heaney was at school. He describes his parents' different ways of displaying grief, visitors paying their respects, and his encounter of his brother's corpse in its coffin the next morning. The poem focuses on concrete particulars of Heaney's experience and "captures a boy’s unfolding consciousness of death." The final line ("A four foot box, a foot for every year.") emphasizes death's finality.

Further reading

  • Allen, Michael, Ed. Seamus Heaney. Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1997.
  • Cañadas, Ivan. “Working Nation(s): Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging’ and the Work Ethic in Post-Colonial and Minority Writing.” EESE: Erfurt Electronic Studies in English (2010).
  • Corcoran, Neil. The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: a Critical Study. London: Faber, 1998.
  • Foster, John Wilson. The Achievement of Seamus Heaney. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1995.
  • Garratt, Robert F., Ed., Critical Essays on Seamus Heaney. New York: G.K. Hall, 1995.
  • Heaney, Seamus. New Selected Poems, 1966-1987. London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990.
  • Heaney, Seamus. Seamus Heaney in Conversation with Karl Miller. London: Between The Lines, 2000.
  • Mathias, Roland. “Death of a Naturalist”, in: The Art of Seamus Heaney, Ed. Tony Curtis, 3rd Edn. Bridgen, Wales: Seren Books, 1994. pp. 11-25.
  • Morrison, Blake. Seamus Heaney. London & New York: Methuen, 1982.
  • Murphy, Andrew. Seamus Heaney. Plymouth: Northcote House / British Council, 1996.
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