Life, literature and inspiration
Cathal Coyle visits Seamus Heaney HomePlace
EXTRACT:
No matter where Seamus Heaney subsequently lived after he left the family home as a boy to attend boarding school, he always considered Mossbawn (located between the villages of Castledawson and Toomebridge) and the neighbouring Bellaghy area of County Derry as his home. Derry City, Belfast, Wicklow, Dublin and Boston were just some of the other places that influenced Heaney’s life and the wonderful poetry that he produced; but he was always at ease on his return to south County Derry to see family and friends.
Many of us first experience Heaney’s poetry through his evocative descriptions of rural family life, with poems like Blackberry Picking, Digging and Follower. And with this strong bond established between person and place, it is fitting that the local community together with Seamus’s family helped to establish an innovative and interactive arts centre in his honour called, quite simply, HomePlace. […]
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September/October 2018(issue no.381)
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