Blackberry Picking (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Blackberry Picking

Here, you’ll find a guide to Seamus Heaney's poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ to help prepare you for the Eduqas GCSE English Literature exam. It includes:

• Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations

• Writer’s methods: an exploration of Heaney’s techniques and methods

• Historical and literary context: an exploration of connections between contextual aspects and the themes and ideas within Heaney's poem

Linking the poems: an understanding of how ‘Blackberry Picking’ connects to other poems in the Eduqas GCSE English Literature Poetry Anthology

Overview

In order to answer questions on any poem it is vital that you understand what it is about. This section includes:

• An overview of the poem

• A ‘translation’ of the poem, section-by-section

• A commentary of each of these sections, outlining Seamus Heaney’s intention and message

‘Blackberry Picking’ overview

Seamus Heaney's poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ details a memory from childhood. The nostalgic speaker vividly describes the tastes and textures of picking blackberries with a companion. Heaney’s speaker remembers, however, the speed at which the blackberries rotted once they were picked and how this symbolises the fleeting nature of pleasure and life. 

‘Blackberry Picking’ translation

Lines 1-4

Translation

• The speaker describes the end of summer when the blackberries ripen

• They describe the varying colours that show different stages of ripening

Heaney’s intention

• Heaney's vivid imagery brings to life the late summer weather and the bright colours of blackberries as they reach maturity

• The speaker recalls how the ripening process begins gradually:

  • At first, there is only one ripe berry that stands out among the rest of the crop

  • There is a clear contrast between this and the unripe ones, which are still tightly bound (“hard as a knot”)

• The early introduction of the berry as a “glossy purple clot” likens the dark juice of the fruit to a blood clot:

  • This establishes a darker undertone to the poem and foreshadows the poem’s broader themes of mortality, decay and the fleeting nature of life

Lines 5-10

Translation

• The speaker addresses an unnamed listener:

  • Their companion tried a ripe blackberry and it stained their mouth

• The taste tempted them to pick more when the remaining berries ripened:

  • They returned with different kinds of vessels that they could use to collect blackberries from the sharp bushes

  • The taste triggered an intense greed (a “lust”)

Heaney’s intention

• Heaney uses intense imagery that likens the brightly coloured blackberry juice to blood, wine, and ink:

  • A simile compares the “flesh” of the blackberries to “thickened wine”

  • Heaney portrays the memory and experiences as hedonistic or sensually self-indulgent, and quite adult given it is implied the subjects of the poem are children

  • It suggests the children are getting drunk on the thrill of the harvest

• Sensory imagery presents a vivid memory of a difficult environment (sharp  “briars” and damp grass):

  • The environment they have to tackle in order to satisfy their hunger is quite hostile

Lines 11-16

Translation

• The speaker explains that they walked a long way and picked many blackberries of different colours until the “cans” were “full”

• Their hands were sore from sharp bushes and “sticky” from blackberry juice 

Heaney’s intention

• Heaney describes a rural Irish setting and a determined hunt with a list (“Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills”)

• The ripe berries sit on the top of the cans and “burned / Like a plate of eyes”

  • The personification of the berries as watching eyes suggests a sense of guilt at the children’s greedy plunder of nature

• Imagery describes the fruit-picking as painful and bloody:

  • The allusion to Bluebeard, a French folktale in which a mad and powerful nobleman murders his wives, strips away the innocence of a childhood pastime, framing the harvest as the murder of nature

Lines 17-21

Translation

• The speaker and their companion stored their berries in a cow shed (“byre”)

• In the bath (perhaps a trough), amongst the berries, they noticed a “fungus” that was spoiling the fruit

• Once the blackberries had been plucked they began to decompose

Heaney’s intention

• Heaney uses words like “hoarded” and “cache” to emphasise the children’s possessiveness

• He continues the grotesque imagery by evoking ideas of vermin and disease (“rat-grey”), as well as the fungus “glutting” (feasting greedily)

• The rotting blackberries become the main metaphor of the poem for the fleeting nature of life and mortality

Lines 22-24

Translation

• The speaker remembers how sad it was to see the berries decay

• All the berries they had collected could not be kept

• This pattern, repeated every year, was something the speaker had to learn to accept

Heaney’s intention

• Heaney’s tone shifts with a short sentence and caesura in “I always felt like crying”: the memory becomes sorrowful

• Heaney’s reference to the injustice of the berries being lost may refer to the inevitable cycle of life, that death always follows what was once full of life

• The final line presents a resigned speaker who has become cynical with age

Writer’s methods

This section is divided into three sections: form, structure and language. When you write about a poem, aim to expand your interpretation of what the poet is writing about by exploring how they present their ideas and why they have made the technical choices they have.

Focusing on the poet’s ideas and how they express them will gain you far more marks than examining individual poetic techniques. Look at the analysis in the sections below, which is organised by the main themes of ‘Blackberry Picking’ and demonstrates the methods and reasons for Seamus Heaney’s choices of:

• Form

• Structure

• Language

Form

The poem is in the form of a personal reflection that addresses a listener, presumably a companion. The speaker offers an intimate and personal reflection about childhood memories picking blackberries.

Structure

The poem is structured as two stanzas which present reflections on a childhood memory. The first stanza narrates the intense experience picking blackberries. The second stanza shifts to a personal reflection on the symbolic experience.

Language

Heaney reflects the complex and contradictory nature of a childhood experience in which lessons are learned. He portrays the experience amongst nature as wild and sensual, as well as painful and disappointing. 

Historical and literary context

Context offers you a different perspective on a poem and can enrich your engagement with it. However, examiners don’t want contextual information added on at the end of your essay, or even in your introduction. Instead, your knowledge of Seamus Heaney’s life should be used to explore themes and support an analysis of the poem.

The ideas explored in 'Blackberry Picking’ focus on the power of reflection, the vibrancy of nature, as well as the sadness that comes with accepting the impermanence of joy and vitality. Therefore, this section has been bullet-pointed under the following themes:

• Memory and reflection 

• Destruction of innocence

• The power of nature and place

Memory and reflection

• Seamus Heaney, 1995 winner of the Nobel prize for literature, was born in Northern Ireland in 1939

• He is considered one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century

• His collection of poems, ‘Death of a Naturalist', explores childhood experiences, identity, family relationships, and rural life:

  • Heaney’s poems often explore personal experiences through a first person speaker’s inner monologue or lyric voice

• In ‘Blackberry Picking’, the speaker recalls childhood summers picking berries:

  • Vivid imagery and auditory language reflects the intensity of memory

• Through this memory, however, the speaker is able to reach a deeper understanding about nature and the human experience:

  • The recollection allows the speaker to express feelings about the inevitability of life: “I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair”

  • Heaney’s speaker remembers their disappointment: “Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not”

Destruction of innocence 

• Heaney’s poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ was published in 1966, in the globally-recognised collection of poems ‘Death of a Naturalist’

• The beginning of the poem may allude to the Garden of Eden, where a pair of innocent individuals (Adam and Eve) revel in nature:

  • The pair in Heaney's poem lustily eat fruit and revel in the sensual nature of the blood-red berries

  • The poem alludes to the idea of temptation: they eat “At first, just one”, but “hunger” sent them looking for more

  • Heaney alludes to human greed and sensual lust: he writes that they “hoarded” the can-full of berries 

  • Heaney presents the consequences of lust by using the allusion of “Bluebeard”, a nobleman who brutally murdered his wives 

• The poem ends with the speaker’s sorrowful acceptance that once the fruit is picked it always decays, symbolising the death of joy and the fleeting nature of life:

  • A pleasurable childhood memory leads to cynicism

The power of nature and place

• Much of Heaney's poetry is influenced by his rural childhood in County Derry, Northern Ireland, and his childhood living on a farm:

  • The poem refers to farm life, such as “milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots”

• His poems often feature colloquialisms which reflect the impact of his native land on his work:

  • In ‘Blackberry Picking', Heaney refers to “hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills”, as well as a “byre”

• Heaney's work is said to be influenced by Robert Frost, who is known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his conversational voice: 

  • ‘Blackberry Picking’ uses simple imagery that describes late summer weather as “heavy rain and sun” and “wet grass”

  • The poem speaks to an implied listener, a childhood companion

Linking the poems

The Eduqas GCSE English Literature exam asks you to compare two poems from the anthology. You will be given the text of one poem in the question paper, but you will need to compare this with another poem of your choice, one that comments on the particular theme in the question. It stands to reason, then, that it will be a good idea to understand your anthology poems according to their themes.

Here, you will find a guided list of poems that work well together, and how they are linked by a common theme. Do remember, though, the list below is not exhaustive and themes and ideas often overlap.

The poems you could link with Seamus Heaney's poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ are:

• ‘Cousin Kate’ by Christina Rossetti

• ‘Catrin’ by Gillian Clarke

• ‘War photographer’ by Carol Ann Duffy

• ‘Disabled’ by Wilfred Owen

• ‘Remains’ by Simon Armitage

• ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ by William Wordsworth

• ‘Decomposition’ by Zulfikar Ghose

• ‘The Schoolboy’ by William Blake

• ‘Sonnet 29’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• ‘Kamikaze’ by Beatrice Garland

• ‘I Shall Return’ by Claude McKay

• ‘Drummer Hodge’ by Thomas Hardy

Sources:

Poetry Anthology (C720) (opens in a new tab)