Seamus Heaney

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him

Elisa Gonzalez
December 15, 2025

“BETWEEN MY FINGER and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.” This is the opening couplet of “Digging,” the first poem in Seamus Heaney’s first book. Published in 1966, when Heaney was twenty-seven, “Digging” became one of his best-known poems, included in countless anthologies and syllabi. It’s a feat of metaphor and muscular narrative, controlled yet bold. Heaney later called it “the first poem I wrote where I thought my feelings had got into words, or to put it more accurately, where I thought my feel had got into words.” The feel is a consonantal swagger, announcing a poet assured in his own rhythms and vernacular—and in his handling of both.

Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen

Chocolate Cake

by Michael Rosen

I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.

Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
'If there's any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.'
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime
and sit in the corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.

Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
'The chocolate cake.'
It was the first thing
1 thought of.

I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?

It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door

there's always a creaky floorboard, isn't there?

Past Mum and Dad's room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys
or bits of Lego
you know what it's like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,

yowwww
shhhhhhh

downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.

So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there's a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.

oooooooommmmmmmmm

nice.

Then
I look again
and on one side where it's been cut,
it's all crumbly.

So I take a knife
I think I'll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth

oooooommm mmmm
nice.

Look at the cake again.

That looks a bit funny now,
one side doesn't match the other
I'll just even it up a bit, eh?

Take the knife
and slice.
This time the knife makes a little cracky noise
as it goes through that hard icing on top.

A whole slice this time,

into the mouth.

Oh the icing on top
and the icing in the middle
ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm.

But now
I can't stop myself
Knife -
1 just take any old slice at it
and I've got this great big chunk
and I'm cramming it in
what a greedy pig
but it's so nice,

and there's another
and another and I'm squealing and I'm smacking my lips
and I'm stuffing myself with it
and
before I know
I've eaten the lot.
The whole lot.

I look at the plate.
It's all gone.

Oh no
they're bound to notice, aren't they,
a whole chocolate cake doesn't just disappear
does it?

What shall 1 do?

I know. I'll wash the plate up,
and the knife

and put them away and maybe no one
will notice, eh?

So I do that
and creep creep creep
back to bed
into bed
doze off
licking my lips
with a lovely feeling in my belly.
Mmmmrnmmmmm.

In the morning I get up,
downstairs,
have breakfast,
Mum's saying,
'Have you got your dinner money?'
and I say,
'Yes.'
'And don't forget to take some chocolate cake with you.'
I stopped breathing.

'What's the matter,' she says,
'you normally jump at chocolate cake?'

I'm still not breathing,
and she's looking at me very closely now.

She's looking at me just below my mouth.
'What's that?' she says.
'What's what?' I say.

'What's that there?'
'Where?'
'There,' she says, pointing at my chin.
'I don't know,' I say.
'It looks like chocolate,' she says.
'It's not chocolate is it?'
No answer.
'Is it?'
'I don't know.'
She goes to the cupboard
looks in, up, top, middle, bottom,
turns back to me.
'It's gone.
It's gone.
You haven't eaten it, have you?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know. You don't know if you've eaten a whole
chocolate cake or not?
When? When did you eat it?'

So I told her,

and she said
well what could she say?
'That's the last time I give you any cake to take
to school.
Now go. Get out
no wait
not before you've washed your dirty sticky face.'
I went upstairs
looked in the mirror
and there it was,
just below my mouth,
a chocolate smudge.
The give-away.
Maybe she'll forget about it by next week.

The Child Who Was Wild by Michael Rosen

 

The Child Who Was Wild

by Michael Rosen

Once there was a woman, a young, young woman
She ran from the city, the old, old city
She ran to the woods, the deep dark woods
She wasn’t seen for days. Days, weeks and months.
She came out of the woods, the deep dark woods
She came with a child, a child who was wild.
She brought the child to the city, the old, old city
He grew and he grew and he grew and he grew
Out of his hands grew shoots: green shoots and leaves
Out of his shoulders grew the lily and the rose
His hair was the blossom that blows in the wind,
He stood in the city, the old, old city
with the leaves and the flowers and the blossom
falling, falling, falling on grey, grey gravel.

Alphabet by Michael Rosen

 

Illustration By Enki Bilal

Alphabet

by Michael Rosen

 

You found a place
where I wasn't me
you shut your eyes
and you could see.....
an apple all alone,
bears being bad,
computers cooking cakes,
dogs drawing dad.

Boogy Woogy Buggy by Michael Rosen

 

Boogy Woogy Buggy

by Michael Rosen

I glide as I ride
in my boogy woogy buggy
take the corners wide
just see me drive
I’m an easy speedy baby
doing the baby buggy jive

I’m in and out the shops
I’m the one that never stops
I’m the one that feels
the beat of the wheels
all that air
in my hair
I streak down the street
between the feet that I meet.

No one can catch
my boogy woogy buggy
no one’s got the pace
I rule this place

I’m a baby who knows
I’m a baby who goes, baby, goes.

Do I know you? by Michael Rosen

 

Illustration by Enki Bilal

¿Te conozco?

Por Michael Rosen

Estoy perdido,
estoy perdido,
no sé dónde estoy.
Soy un calcetín en una lavadora,
una fresa en mermelada,
soy una carta en un libro,
soy la burbuja en una bebida efervescente,
soy un guijarro en la playa,
soy una pregunta en un concurso.
No sé dónde estás,
no sabes dónde estás,
no sabes cuándo estoy,
no sé cómo estabas,
no sabes a quién me refiero.

Así que encuéntrame
Encuéntrame
Pregúntame quién soy
Sácame de la lavadora
Sácame de la mermelada
Abre el libro
Deja salir toda la efervescencia
Caminemos por la playa
Y responderé a tu cuestionario
Entonces sabré dónde estás
Sabrás cuándo estoy
Sabré cómo estabas
Y sabrás a quién admiro.

‘Difficult love’ / Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets

'Amor difícil': una editorial española reedita un libro pionero con los sonetos homoeróticos de Lorca.

Este artículo tiene más de 9 meses de antigüedad.

Los poemas de Federico García Lorca fueron publicados anónimamente en 1983 después de haber permanecido ocultos por su familia durante 50 años.

Sam Jones en Madrid,
viernes 13 de junio de 2025

En otoño de 1983, decenas de lectores cuidadosamente seleccionados recibieron un sobre que contenía un pequeño librito rojo con sonetos que habían permanecido guardados desde que fueron escritos casi 50 años antes por el poeta español más famoso del siglo XX.

Name of Federico García Lorca's lover emerges after 70 years

 

Federico García Lorca

Name of Federico García Lorca's lover emerges after 70 years

This article is more than 13 years old

Box of mementoes reveals that young art critic Juan Ramírez de Lucas had brief affair with Spanish poet

Giles Tremlette in Madrid

10 May 2012

The identity of the lover to whom Federico García Lorca wrote passionate verse in his final year has been a mystery ever since the poet's assassination during the Spanish civil war. But now, more than 70 years later, his name has finally emerged.

Lost Federico García Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written

Federico García Lorca

Lost Federico García Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written

Eight-line poem found on the back of a manuscript sheds light on Spanish poet’s preoccupation with time

Sam Jones in Madrid

Sat 18 Apr 2026 05.00 BST

A previously unknown verse attributed to Federico García Lorca has been discovered 93 years after the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright is believed to have jotted it on the back of one of his manuscripts.

Lorca is thought to have written the eight-line poem in 1933 while working on the collection Diván del Tamarit, a homage to the Arab poets of his native Granada.

The newly discovered verse was found on the reverse of a manuscript of one of the Tamarit poems – Gacela de la raíz amarga – which the flamenco singer and Lorca enthusiast Miguel Poveda bought from a German antiquarian.

It has since been verified by the Lorca expert Pepa Merlo and will feature in a forthcoming book.

The brief verse, composed three years before Lorca was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war, reveals the poet’s familiar preoccupation with the passing of time: “The clock sings / I count the hours mechanically / Seven o’clock; twelve o’clock / It’s all the same / I am not here / It is the mark of flesh / That I left behind when I departed / So as to know my place / Upon my return.”

Poveda, who recently led efforts to turn Lorca’s childhood home into a cultural centre dedicated to the poet’s life and work, said he had been deeply moved by the fortuitous discovery.

The manuscript was bought by the flamenco singer Miguel Poveda. Photograph: RTVE

“My attention was grabbed when Pepa Merlo said to me, ‘That’s Federico’s handwriting. You’ve got something new by Federico there’,” he told the state broadcaster TVE on Thursday.

“For me, it’s a heartfelt gift. It’s all there in those lines, ‘It is the mark of flesh / That I left behind, when I departed / So as to know my place / Upon my return’.”

Merlo said that while the verse may have been overlooked because it was scribbled on the back of another work, it nonetheless revealed “the importance that the concept of time held for Lorca”.

The gay, progressive writer – whose works include Gypsy Ballads, Poet in New York, Blood Wedding, Yerma, and the House of Bernarda Alba – was shot by a rightwing death squad in August 1936, becoming perhaps the most prominent victim of Spain’s three-year civil war. His body has never been found and is thought to lie in a shallow grave at the bottom of a mountain slope near Granada.

Interest in Lorca has only grown as the centenary of his death draws near. Last summer, a facsimile edition of the poet’s homoerotic, anguished – and posthumously published – Sonnets of Dark Love was issued to bring the poems to a new readership.

Although long known to Lorca scholars, the sonnets had been hidden away by the poet’s family, who believed their tortured and sensual lines would taint his legacy and stir up old hatreds.

The newly discovered poem will be published in a book written by Poveda and Merlo titled Las cosas del otro lado. lo inédito en Federico García Lorca(Things from the Other Side: the Unpublished in Federico García Lorca).

THE GUARDIAN