Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past in his poetry

... Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past in his poetry Seamus Heaney was born on 13th April 1939 on a farm called Mossbawn in Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children, and was brought up as a Roman Catholic, which later, proved to be a popular topic in his poetry. Heaney's childhood was full of deaths from relatives and friends which give him a certain amount of understanding about death and corpses, a poem that shows this is 'The Tollund Man'. In his poetry, Seamus Heaney usually starts in the past tense, imagining that he is still in his childhood, and then suddenly, towards the end of the poem, turns to the present tense, and reflects how his childhood memories have affected him as an adult. 'Digging' is a perfect example of Heaney returning to his origins. Heaney evokes the rural landscape

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