A three-day conference from 5-7 June 2025, in partnership with Trinity College Dublin, will bring together Heaney experts from across the world to the beautiful new Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s – celebrating its first anniversary also in June.

Luminaries of the literary sphere including the Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and Professor Edna Longley will gather to hear distinguished authors, academics and poets discuss the significance of North 50 years on.

Alongside all the scholarly debate, there will also be a family-friendly traditional music session and a screening of the documentary Heaney in Limboland, made for TV in 1970 and featuring Heaney’s views on the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Northern Ireland.

North anthology

North is still considered a controversial volume. Upon publication in 1975, the American poet Robert Lowell said it represented “a new kind of political poetry by the best Irish poet since WB Yeats” and the anthology went on to win awards including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the WH Smith Memorial Prize.

Heaney himself admitted the collection took a “hammering” from other quarters, closer to home, for its representation of violence and gender politics.

Its influence hasn’t diminished in the years since and poems from it continue to be collected, anthologized, and studied. It’s widely considered to be a ‘moment’ in the evolution of Heaney from a significant Irish poet to a poet of international standing, culminating in his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature 20 years later, in 1995.

Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Professor Glenn Patterson said:

“Whichever way you come at it, in admiration, in awe or in search of an argument, there is no understanding poetry from these islands in the past half century, without North. 

“There are not many books, of any kind, that merit an ‘at 50’ conference, but North seems only to grow in significance with every year that passes, and with every year that passes to attract new readers, and new critical thinking.”

The poet’s daughter Catherine Heaney, who is hoping to attend the conference, said on behalf of the Estate of Seamus Heaney:

“We are proud and honoured that the 50th anniversary of North is being marked with this conference, alongside Faber’s reissue of the volume in its original jacket.

“The publication of North was such a pivotal moment in my father’s life and career and it is testament to its staying power that, five decades on, it continues to resonate with readers and inspire scholarly debate."

Lead organiser of the conference and Queen’s graduate, Dr Stephen O’Neill from Trinity College Dublin said:

“Written under the strain of what Seamus Heaney called ‘a very high pressure’, North was a landmark in his writing career. It was and is also a landmark in criticism, as a subject for many of the leading critics of Irish literature then and now.

“Organised to coincide with Faber’s anniversary republication of the volume, the conference is a chance to reflect upon the impact of Heaney’s fourth collection and reassess its reception.”

All events will take place at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's, 38-40 University Road, Belfast (unless otherwise stated). The full conference programme is available here.

Attendance is free, but registration is essential and delegates are encouraged to register for all three days.

Media

Media inquiries to Una Bradley u.bradley@qub.ac.uk