I have picked number 71 from the top 100 Irish poems list and once again it is a familiar appearance on the list, Seamus Heaney. Ironically it was last week’s poem that I randomly picked Seamus Heaney for his poem about Station island. A very descriptive poem as well.

So what is the poem Follower all about?

The title of the poem tells of how the young Heaney followed his father while he was ploughing. It is a poem that speaks about relationships, growing old and life. Seamus reflects on his younger life in the final paragraph where he talks about how he was a “nuisance”.

I also found an incredible old video of Seamus Heaney himself reading this poem. You can find it directly under my notes on the poem below.nbsp;

Follower

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

It is my father who keeps stumbling / Behind me, and will not go away.

Follower first appeared in Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney’s first collection, published by Faber and Faber in 1966. It looks back to his childhood on the family farm at Mossbawn in County Derry, where his father worked the fields with horses.

Most of the poem is a portrait of the father as a master ploughman. Heaney borrows the language of sailing and of map making to show the man’s strength and precision, and he uses the proper farming words for the plough and the team. Beside this expert the young Heaney is small and clumsy, a child who adores his father and wants nothing more than to grow up and do the same work.

The last stanza turns everything around. Years later the roles are reversed: the son is the grown man, and it is the ageing father who now trails behind him. You can read that as the care a grown child owes an old parent, as guilt or impatience, or as the way a father’s memory stays with us. Heaney leaves all of these open, and that is why the ending lands so hard.

Read the full poem: Follower by Seamus Heaney at the Poetry Foundation. You will also find it in Death of a Naturalist (Faber and Faber).