AH English - Heaney

Has anyone got any Heaney past paper questions from before 2006? The book of past papers is so rubbish, it only has 06, 07, 08! Just wondering if anyone else who is doing Heaney has got a hold of some from teachers?

Reply 1

indigoviolet

Where are my fellow Heaney-ers? Surely there's got to be some! The man is awesome :p:

Reply 2

sarahleslie1

Sorry, our school dropped Heaney after trying it last year... Plath ftw!

Here's the one from the SQP though

Heaney

Read the following poem from the sequence Clearances and answer the question that follows it.

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911–1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives --
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

It has been said that Heaney “never allows elegy to sentimentalise actual, intractable human difficulty”.

How far is this statement true of this poem and of two or three other elegies on the death of friends or family members?