Digging

Between is the first word of the last three lines of Seamus Heaney’s poem Digging;

“Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.”

The handwriting portrayed is a copy of the Heaney handwriting in a dedication he did for a fan in 1997 and is in an earth brown in a green “field”. The pen is a Conway Stewart, a brand much favoured and indeed written about by Heaney.

This is the second version of this image, “Between” the first painting in the series is being used by the Community Arts Partnership run by Conor Shields. It appears on the promotional material and trophies for their competition Making Memories “The Seamus Heaney Award for new Writing”.