The Influence of "The Belfast Group" on the Emergence of Seamus Heaney's Poetry.

Abstract

This article will demonstrate how Philip Hobsbaum’s Belfast writing group, modelled on a similar group in the UK, defined Seamus Heaney as a poet. His review of ‘A Group Anthology’ in 1963 sparked in him an enthusiasm for a writers’ group which would provide encouragement and critical criticism from fellow writers. The young Seamus Heaney stood out among these aspiring writers in the Belfast Group; he had published a few poems in student magazines and local newspapers under the pseudonym Incertus. From the outset, his participation in the workshop sessions, along with Hobsbaum’s teachings and continuous encouragement, were enormously influential in his emergence as a poet. Heaney’s rural origins, his Catholic education and his belonging to a minority community which was being discriminated against, were factors that, together with the political and social context of Northern Ireland at that time, exercised a significant impact on his artistic creation.