Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry Picking"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2023
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s poem is by Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013), an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.[1][2] Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[3][4] Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller."[5] Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".[6]
—Bio via Wikipedia
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, August 11, 2020. Today's poem is by the great Irish poet, Seamus Haney. And it comes from Hayne's first collection of published poetry, Death of Naturalist in 1966. |
| 0:24.4 | And what's remarkable about Haney is that he's still, this is still one of his best known works. |
| 0:30.9 | Often poets limp out with an introductory collection of poetry that establishes their bona fides, but also it will |
| 0:41.2 | help them sort of pay their dues while they hone their craft. |
| 0:45.7 | In fact, many of the poets that we feature on the Daily Poem really don't come into their |
| 0:50.7 | own until midway through their publishing career. |
| 0:55.7 | Haney is remarkable in that he started good and stayed good. So it is my pleasure to present one of his early |
| 1:04.9 | oldies but goodies, Blackberry Picking. I will read the poem once, offer a few comments upon it, and then read it one more time. |
| 1:16.6 | This is Blackberry Picking, my shame is Haney. |
| 1:21.6 | Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. |
| 1:27.7 | At first, just one, a glossy purple clot, among others, red, green, hard as a knot. |
| 1:34.4 | You ate that first one, and its flesh was sweet, like thickened wine. |
| 1:39.2 | Summer's blood was in it, leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking. |
| 1:45.6 | Then red ones inked up, |
| 1:52.5 | and that hunger sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots, where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields, and potato drills, we trekked and picked |
| 1:59.5 | until the cans were full, until the tinkling bottom |
| 2:02.3 | had been covered with green ones, and on top, big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes. |
| 2:09.1 | Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as bluebeards. We hoarded the fresh |
| 2:16.1 | berries in the buyer, but when the bath was filled, we found |
| 2:20.0 | a fur, a rat-gray fungus, glutting on our cash. The juice was stinking, too. Once off the bush, |
| 2:30.3 | the fruit fermented. Sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying it wasn't fair but all the |
| 2:39.1 | lovely canfuls smelt of rot each year i hoped they'd keep knew they would not |
... |
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