Activity 5: Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney

Activity 5: Imagery . Read the poem below and:

a)     note down any imagery you find in the poems – particularly similes or metaphors. What do you think the poet is trying to say with his imagery?  Read the poem at least twice – once to get a general idea of the poem, and a second time to look at the imagery the poet uses.

b)     note any other techniques the poet uses

c)     what is the poem about, and what is the poet trying to say?

Seamus Heaney  Blackberry Picking

Last August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week the blackberries would ripen.
at first just one, a glossy purple clot

Amongst others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine; summer’s blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up 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 until the cans were full,

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking, too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.