English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems

Storm on the Island (1966) - Seamus Heaney

Précis: The poem describes the experience of being in a cliff-top cottage on an island off the coast of Ireland during a storm. Heaney describes the bare ground, the sea and the wind. The people in the cottage are extremely isolated and can do nothing against the powerful and violent weather.  

Context: Seamus Heaney was a poet in Ireland, he grew up in a farming community and many of his poems were about very normal and homely subjects. He uses a large number of agricultural and natural images in his work as metaphors for human nature. 

This poem was included in Heaney's first collection, Death of a Naturalist, from 1966. This book is full of natural imagery. Heaney pays very close attention to what is happening in nature, and in this particular collection he also draws from his own childhood growing up in Northern Ireland. "Storm on the Island," with its whipping wind and water.

The poem ends with "it is a huge nothing that we fear", the suggestion is not just about the weather but also potentially many things. As an Irish Catholic, religion is a big element in Heaney's life. He humbles the weather into very human terms, unlike other poems which fear its might. In many ways, he is also humbling the idea of God. Reducing his power into a "huge nothing". The suggestion of fear is that power is only there if you let the other thing scare you. Behind his walls and well prepared, he doesn't need to fear and so the weather (and god) lose power.  

Images of terrorist violence can be found throughout the poem. Words such as "blast", "exploding", "fear", and "bombarded" describe the literal terms but also represent the storm of violence happening in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles". Interesting to note: the first eight letters of the title spell "STORMONT" (the name deriving from the fact that they are located on the Stormont Estate), the name of the Government buildings in Northern Ireland.

The word "island" also has a phonetic similarity to Ireland, therefore the poem works on two levels: as a description of the storm and as an extended metaphor for the political situation in Northern Ireland.

Themes: The poem looks at the conflict between nature and man and peoples fear of the weather. However, the poet also points out that the fears are really rather small in the grand scheme. There is also a hint of war and conflict in the way the weather is described as "bombardment" and "salvo". 

It also focuses on the power of nature, untameable by man despite beliefs that man can claim and control it.

Structure: The poem is in blank verse with 19 lines. There are 5 feet (10 syllables) in each line. The verses are unrhymed and it gives it a very colloquial tone. This is added to by the use of asides "you know what I mean". The poem is in the present tense to suggest the storm is occurring at the time. The poem uses a great deal of enjambment to help add to the conversational tone: it's supposed to mimic the most natural cadence (rise and fall) of English speech.

"This wizened earth has never troubled us" 

Heaney also uses other poetic forms to keep the rhythm of the poem moving along steadily. When he chooses to break a line (like with line 16: "while the wind dives / And strafes"), he's choosing to keep the poem moving, rather than fully stopping with some sort of punctuation at the end of every line. The goal of blank verse is to keep everything tied together and running smoothly (so we don't have any super-short, choppy lines followed by long, rambling ones), and Heaney achieves just that. More importantly, it creates a kind of regular, peaceful structure — almost like a stone house— that might survive the kind of violent storm that the poem describes. So, is Heaney saying that the only true refuge from the natural world is in poetry? We wouldn't necessarily disagree with him if he were.