Writing Utensils in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney

One can't help but notice the above-average occurence of references to writing implements in Seamus Heaney's new book, and noticing such things is how literary analysis can work and how theses come into being if you're not careful. Having noted a series of such linked features of a writer's work, all one has to do is note them down and explain what their significance is.
Having noted the nostalgic The Conway Stewart, perhaps a memory of his first fountain pen, its squelching, sucking repertoire of amusing noises and the feeling of style and maturity it confers, later in the book come Colum Cille Cecinit, Hermit Songs and 'Lick the pencil' in rapid succession.
The first is versions of three short 11th-12th century Gaelic pieces, the first reflecting on the cramp endured from the writing invested in the storing of wisdom; Hermit Songs relates memories of school and the stationery cupboard, again mixing the subject with the mere utensils of study,
...then Cuchulain

Entertained the embroidery women
By flinging needles in the air
So as they fell the point of one
Partnered with the eye of the next

...As in my dream a gross of nibs
Spills off the shelf, airlifts and links
Into a giddy gilt corona.

'Lick the pencil', another poem presumably in memory of his father, lists some habits that could be nicknames, most memorably a colouring pencil that marked the skin purple as the skin can letter become.
We might then remember that Heane's early 'manifesto poem, Digging, begins,

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests, snug as a gun,

and ends,

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests,
I'll dig with it.

Also, in that first book, Heaney names a poem about his investigation of the farm's earth and wells, his Personal Helicon. This consciously literary way of looking at the world was a part of Heaney's process right from the start, then, and the pen and writing implements more than the extended desk stationery fetishism and celebration of the paperclip to be found in Douglas Dunn's Dante's Drum-kit.
The writing and the world written about are merged by the pen and, on another level, too, with a consciousness of other past literary figures whose traditions he carries on. And, perhaps this awareness of old-fashioned writing paraphenalia, the ink-wells and variety of implements from fountain pen to pencil to crayon, is a way of identifying with the history of writing because he doesn't seem to mention any computer screen or keyboard.
But on the other hand, he's a writer, isn't he, so it's hardly surprising that he occasionally mentions the tool of his trade that he sees lying around every day. He just happens to have written a few poems with writing implements in.