Storm on the Island

I was helping a group of GCSE English students revise poetry the other day, and they all agreed that, of the fifteen poems they had to study, the late Seamus Heaney's Storm on the Island was their least favourite because 'nothing happens'. So, of course, I had to attempt to rectify this, and I thought I would share some of our discussion on here.

First, here is the poem itself:

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.The wizened earth had never troubled usWith hay, so as you can see, there are no stacksOr stooks that can be lost. Nor are there treesWhich might prove company when it blows fullBlast: you know what I mean - leaves and branchesCan raise a chorus in a galeSo that you can listen to the thing you fearForgetting that it pummels your house too.But there are no trees, no natural shelter.You might think that the sea is company,Exploding comfortably down on the cliffsBut no: when it begins, the flung spray hitsThe very windows, spits like a tame catTurned savage. We just sit tight while wind divesAnd strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo.We are bombarded by the empty air.Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

Upon reading it initially, I can sort of understand why a group of sixteen-year-olds who have little interest in poetry might not enjoy this very much. It can easily come across as a poem about a storm and nothing more. So, let's look at it in sections...
The first part of the poem exudes confidence. The first two lines are almost entirely monosyllabic, emphasising how reliable and strong the defences on the island seem to be. Even the first clause, "We are prepared", is a short, simple phrase, as if to make clear that there is literally nothing else the inhabitants of the island can do to protect themselves from the storm.
The earth itself is portrayed as "wizened", an adjective which conjures an image of a wise old man (in fact, when I mentioned the word, a girl muttered "You're a wizened, Harry," and I commend her for that), as if the land is conscious that there is no point producing life, because the storm will destroy it.  It has given up on trying. Similarly, there are no trees, even though they "might provide company". Heaney paints an image of a dry, barren wasteland, with no natural life on it. It is desperately lonely. Later in the poem, he confirms this idea: "But there are no trees, no natural shelter." Nature has abandoned this place, and as such can offer no comfort to the inhabitants.
The idea that leaves and branches "can raise a chorus in a gale" is an interesting one - for me, it creates an image of a kind of ghostly choir in the air, all raising their ominous voices in response to the havoc - think the "pale" men in Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It also brings a classical element to the poem; choruses were commonly used in plays like Antigone, for example. This idea of listening "to the thing you fear / Forgetting that is pummels your house too" is intriguing; in this storm, you can subject yourself to a nightmarish situation though, of course, the nightmare has real consequences.

the late great Seamus Heaney

Heaney continues to offer the reader concepts of comfort, but takes them away just as quickly; "You might think the sea is company", for example, because the idea of waves lapping upon the shore and "exploding comfortably" should, to all intents and purposes, be therapeutic and calming, "But no". The sea is instead personified as a "tame cat / Turned savage." This, in many ways, is a more brutal description than just a "savage cat", because it reminds us that the waves used to be calm and comforting, but the storm has turned them wild. In this poem, nature has turned on us - it either abandons or attacks us, and all we can do is "just sit tight".
The storm is then turned into a kind of air raid (or "salvo"), with the wind performing manoeuvres and it "dives and strafes / Invisibly". Indeed, the inhabitants "are bombarded by the empty air" - something we cannot see is attacking us so violently, hence all we fear is a "huge nothing".
There could easily be more to this idea than just the simple story of a storm. Is it a description of humanity's strange fear of nothing? Of the unknown? People fear the unknown, as it attacks us and bashes us like a storm, gradually eroding us away. And yet, what we are fearing does not exist, because we do not know what it is. 
Now, that last part is just my opinion on the deeper meaning this poem seems to have. If you disagree, that's more than fine, but the important thing (especially for GCSE) is that you do have an opinion, and know how to back it up quotes and analysis. I might do some more GCSE or A Level poems going forward...