18 pages • 36 minutes read
North
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats (1819)
John Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn” is perhaps the seminal poetic mediation on an artifact. Like in Heaney’s “North,” Keats’s speaker investigates and describes an artifact that communicates a message to the speaker. Though Keats’s work is less connected to the body or a sense of place, the two poems engage with the past in nearly identical ways.
“No Second Troy" by William Butler Yeats (1903)
William Butler Yeats was perhaps the best-known Irish poet prior to Seamus Heaney, and the two explore similar themes. “No Second Troy” is an interesting example of Yeats’s engagement with many of the themes of “North,” but in a much different context. “No Second Troy” struggles with the de-escalation of historic violence—in this case dating back to Troy rather than the Vikings—while simultaneously acknowledging and reliving that past.
“The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot (1922)
“The Waste Land” provides context and contrast to Heaney’s “North.” Though T.S. Eliot’s poem focuses on the mind and academia while Heaney’s poem focuses on the body and the land, the two works use similar techniques. Both poems, for instance, have a speaker vulnerable to the power of ideas, places, and the continual presence of the past.
“Digging" by Seamus Heaney (1966)
“Digging,” from Heaney’s first collection Death of a Naturalist, shares many themes and concerns with “North.” “Digging” features a speaker who struggles to find an interpretation of the past that suits contemporary life, ultimately deciding to focus their efforts on writing rather than agriculture. In both poems, the speaker’s decision to write is informed by the past.
“Belfast Confetti" by Ciaran Carson (1989)
Many poems dealing with the Troubles came out of Belfast during the 1980s, but “Belfast Confetti” is one of the most striking. Ciaran Carson explores how even basic things like language can fall apart during conflicts. While Heaney’s “North” does not deal with the Troubles directly, a poem like “Belfast Confetti” gives a sense of the violence that Heaney’s speaker rejects.
Further Literary Resources
“This Is Not a Spade: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney" by Ola Larsmo (1995)
Seamus Heaney had a long and active career as a writer and poet, and it can be difficult to contextualize one of his poems as part of his larger body of work. In this article occasioned by Heaney’s reception of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Larsmo elucidates many of the themes, ideas, and questions that motivated Heaney’s work. Larsmo’s interpretation of how Heaney’s work grapples with the “growing distance between the world of language and the physical world he sees around him” contextualizes some of the relationships between physical things and the work of the poet (Paragraph 2).
“Celts and Vikings - Scandinavian Influences on the Celtic Nations" by Alastair Kneale (2013)
“North” investigates, among other things, the complex relationship between the Vikings of Iceland and Greenland and Heaney’s contemporary Northern Ireland. Nordic raiding parties and settlers played a profound impact on the culture of Ireland and many of the British Isles between the 8th and 13th centuries. While the Nordic influence did not end with the raids, this article outlines the period whence Heaney’s raiders originate.
“How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland" by Dave Roos (2021)
Heaney draws many implicit connections between the violence of the historical Nordic raiders and the violence he saw around him during the Troubles. This article effectively encapsulates the violence and conflict of the Troubles from 1968 to 1972. Events like 1972’s Bloody Sunday, which saw 13 protesters killed and 17 wounded, is just one example of the decades of conflict between Catholic Ireland and Protestant England that took around 3,600 lives.
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By Seamus Heaney
