Dig Your Potatoes
Seamus Heaney, creative "fieldwork," and working with lumpy, imperfect ideas.
There is a poem by the late, great Seamus Heaney called “Digging,” in which he explores two early, connected memories.
First, the memory of watching his father, stooped and digging through the potato drills1 outside the window of Heaney’s childhood home:
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
Second, the memory of bringing a milk bottle to his grandfather who worked the bogs, driving his spade through the “cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap / Of soggy peat,” in search of “the good turf.2”
The landscape of this poem is a semi-mystical terrain where Heaney’s past, present and future exist all at once. I can almost imagine Heaney writing this at his desk, while his grandfather and father work the twilight soil just through the window.
The poem ends with Heaney under-standing these two men who shaped him, while pondering whether he too might find a way to cut and slice as well as they:
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Doing Your Own “Fieldwork”
Sometimes I like to visualize my inner life as a field marked by boundary stones. Beyond those boundary stones, are other people’s territories. But this field is mine – my own space to be, to seek, to find, to create. This is where I show up to do my work – the “fieldwork” of my soul.
My “fieldwork” includes creative writing, psycho-spiritual work, and artwork.
What about you? Maybe your fieldwork includes painting, or gardening, or mentoring others, or any other number of activities that make your heart dance.
This fieldwork is the most vital work that I can engage in. But “real life” also demands my presence and engagement, limiting how often – or how well – I can show up to inner life.
Lately, when I arrive at my field (usually exhausted, frequently running on fumes), I’ve noticed a curious mantra has taken root in my psyche: “Dig your potatoes.”
“Dig your potatoes.”
Let me explain: Like any creative person, I’m perpetually on the hunt for hidden treasure. If there are “gems” hiding in the landscape of my creative life, you bet I want to pull ‘em up and let ‘em sparkle!
But lately when I dig, all I’ve actually been finding are lumpy potatoes. That’s where the mantra comes in. “Dig your potatoes” is my subconscious reminding me: “Forget the ‘gems’ and forget the illusion of perfection. Focus on what is real, what is organic, what has roots. What you can hold in your hands.”
Practically speaking, I think this also means “Don’t wait for divine help, or kindly muses. Just get out there and begin.”
For instance, I’m learning that it’s better to start work on a “lumpy” creative writing idea than it is to wait until the “perfect,” full-formed idea materializes from the ether.
Whatever field we “dig” in, we’re bound to pull up our fair share of potatoes. Spuds aren’t sexy – but you know what? They can feed you.3 They can feed others. Potato plants are living things, with “living roots” that might just lead you to something even deeper, if you keep showing up and keep working.
Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” is an example of this kind of transformational process; he kept running his metaphorical spade through the old family potato patch until he turned up a real gem of a poem.
So, let’s dig. Best of luck!
Rian
“Turf has been an important part of Irish culture and history, and it is still used today in many parts of the country. Turf, or peat, is a sedimentary deposit made up of partially decayed plants that has been harvested. It is cut from bogs, dried, and burned as a fuel source for heating and cooking.” (Source)
Just ask Mark Watney, protagonist of “The Martian"!”