Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Heaney's emphasis on sounds to underscore the power of David Hammond's songs in Heaney's poem.

When one first looks at Heaney's poem, "The Singer's House," it may not appear to have a planned structure, other than the anchoring of the two place names, "Carrickfergus" and "Gweebarra." The poem references a number of separate ideas and creates images that may not make sense at first. However, upon further inspection, the poem is revealed to be a carefully designed effort to underscore the power of and need for David Hammond's contributions as a singer. This planning starts with the poem's overall structure, the organization of the stanzas. The poem is divided into eight stanzas, and both the first and the last stanza are self-contained units, which talk about "saltminers' picks...