"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it."
Digging
Seamus Justin Heaney, a contemporary Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1995, is widely considered one of the main twentieth century writers. In fact, many critics considered him the most important Irish poet since W. B. Yeats. Born in a farming family in Northern Ireland, Heaney suffered many divisions in his life – personal, social and political all together. He sat an aim for himself to be like his ancestors, who protected their lands in the face of the English colonization, and become a defender of Ireland in his own way. In 1966, he wrote his famous poem Digging, which defines his mission as a poet, and placed it as an introductory to his collection Death of a Naturalist. A reader of Heaney's works will notice that the analogy of digging is running throughout all of his poems, whether it is a physical excavation or an intellectual one. This image of digging is depicted in his themes and poetic discourse to form an Irish identity that divorces itself from the English rule by combining both earthy roots and airy imagination. To begin with, there are certain features that characterize the themes in Heaney's poetry. In most of his poems, Heaney illustrates the Irish landscape and the rural life of the farmers to show the strong ties between his people and their land. Moreover, he spoke in one of his essays about the influence of the bog lands in which dead bodies were excavated. He believes, therefore, that poetry works as a preserver of history just like these bog lands. Heaney's interest in the power of words is noticeably reflected in his selection of his poetic discourse. He tries to abandon himself from the English traditions of writings and presents his own that demonstrates his Irishness. One of the main interesting characteristics of his style is the use of the sound