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    • The Centre
    • The Blackbird
    • The Heaney Community
    • Literary Belfast
  • Our People
    • The SHC Fellows
    • Ciaran Carson & Publishing Fellows
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    • Children's Writing Fellow
    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Future Screens
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
    • Poetry Prize 2022
  • Resources
    • The SHC Podcast
    • SHC Publications
    • Criticism & Ideas on Writing
    • Films & Virtual Events
    • Writers' Interviews
    • Tiny Masterclasses
  • News
  • Events
    • SHC Presents...
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In This Section
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Criticism & Ideas on Writing

Criticism at Queen's

Reading, writing, and thinking about writing is a vital part of our postgraduate courses. Students are encouraged to read widely and think deeply, on a broad range of texts during their studies, whether they are focusing on a purely creative, or critical pathway. Read more about postgraduate courses here. 

The Friday Critique

Our students are dedicated to generating healthy, dynamic critical debate. They're bringing short-form reviews of new writing into the world on a weekly basis.

The Saturday Matinee

Our students care about good writing on the page and on the screen. Regulars at the Queen's Film theatre, they're sharing short-form film reviews each weekend. 

Notions: Theories of Writing and Reading

Students and alumni share their thoughts on the literary process and reading habits in this video series of observation, obscurity and oddity.

The Twelve Reads of Christmas

A series of 60-second shorts to celebrate just some of the new writing, produced this year by our staff, students, Fellows and friends.

Every year we're amazed at the round up of publications and productions by writers associated with the Seamus Heaney Centre, and while we've had fewer opportunities to squeeze into venues and raise glasses together, this year has been no exception. Watch the short films here. 


The Candlelight Master, by Michael Longley
by Rachel Mawhinney

When Longley says in the beautifully laconic “Poem”, ‘I am the Candlelight Master/ striking a match in the shadows’, it seems to hint towards the contents of this collection; fragments of light set amidst darkness. 

This is Longley’s latest collection, and in it, he moves like a grandmaster chess player, pieces positioning with exactitude on the board. ‘The Candlelight Master’ is a book of reflections and shadows, observed with the acuity of a life-long cataloguer. In “Flower-Names”, Longley takes us back to the 1988 murder of George Larmour on the Lisburn Road and the elegy “The Ice Cream Man” from his collection, ‘Gorse Fires’. He is not afraid to revisit pain, re-examining the capacity of words for healing, refusing to be silenced by acts which themselves are unspeakable.

He continues to sew his greek mythology into the fertile backdrop of Carrigskeewaun and we are glad to be soothed once more by the recitations of his masterful listing. In “Fen Violet” he says of his daughter, ‘You paint flowers, Sarah, as though they have souls.’ Similarly, he paints worlds out of words, his poems like little charges, sent out full of colour and soul. 

The gentler side of this body of work, most exquisitely captured in poems like “Toes” and “Tadpoles” are full of Longley’s enduring love for his grandchildren. In contrast, the much darker presence alive in “Moths and Butterflies” and “Dandelions” are for the forgotten children of the Holocaust . The exploration into the complexity of what it is to be human is stretched throughout the collection from the smallest observations to the grandest scale where men die as animals in “War” and “Victor”.

Pleasanter moments can be found infused in poems like “Key-changes” where we can feel the nostalgia humming as clearly as the notes played by his childhood piano teacher. “Brother” and “Peter”, are elegies for his twin brother, and are so delicately done, they seem like kisses upon the page. There is much warmth as these poems gather about each other, meditations on life in “December”, and as the book closes with the semi-found poem, “Love”, it is not hard to feel the familiar sense of encircling, healing and homecoming. And for that, Longley’s readers are still hoping, still listening.

From  “In My Sleep”

I am relieved
You were awake
To hear me speak:
Goodness. Spindrift

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Associated Events

Writing Critical Reviews with Tara McEvoy - Date: 12/11/2020

Date: 12/11/2020
Time: 10:00AM - 12:00PM
Location: Online
Category: Lecture / Talk / Discussion

Criticism & Ideas on Writing
  • Resources
  • The Friday Critique
  • The Twelve Reads of Christmas
  • Notions
  • The Saturday Matinee
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