Top
Skip to Content
LOGO(small) - Queen's University Belfast
  • Our facebook
  • Our instagram
  • Our x-twitter
LOGO(large) - Queen's University Belfast

The Seamus Heaney Centre

  • Home
  • About
    • The Centre
    • The Blackbird
    • The Heaney Community
    • Literary Belfast
    • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre
  • Our People
    • The SHC Fellows
    • Ciaran Carson & Publishing Fellows
    • Fulbright Scholars
    • Children's Writing Fellow
    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
    • Hear from Alumni
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2025
    • Poetry Prize 2024
    • Poetry Prize 2023
    • Poetry Prize 2022
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
  • Resources
    • The SHC Podcast
    • SHC Publications
    • Criticism & Ideas on Writing
    • Films & Virtual Events
    • Writers' Interviews
    • Tiny Masterclasses
  • News
  • Events
    • SHC Presents...
    • Ekphrasis: Writing & Art
    • Conferences
    • Reading Seamus Heaney
    • Translation
  • Home
  • About
    • The Centre
    • The Blackbird
    • The Heaney Community
    • Literary Belfast
    • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre
  • Our People
    • The SHC Fellows
    • Ciaran Carson & Publishing Fellows
    • Fulbright Scholars
    • Children's Writing Fellow
    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
    • Hear from Alumni
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2025
    • Poetry Prize 2024
    • Poetry Prize 2023
    • Poetry Prize 2022
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
  • Resources
    • The SHC Podcast
    • SHC Publications
    • Criticism & Ideas on Writing
    • Films & Virtual Events
    • Writers' Interviews
    • Tiny Masterclasses
  • News
  • Events
    • SHC Presents...
    • Ekphrasis: Writing & Art
    • Conferences
    • Reading Seamus Heaney
    • Translation
  • Our facebook
  • Our instagram
  • Our x-twitter
In This Section
  • The Centre
  • The Blackbird
  • The Heaney Community
  • Literary Belfast
  • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre

  • Home
  • Seamus Heaney Centre
  • About
  • The Blackbird

The Blackbird

Ciaran Carson, founding Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre

explains the background to Jeffrey Morgan's Blackbird, which is the emblem of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's. 


"In October 2003, on my first day as director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, I was walking up the little path to the School of English at 2 University Square when I spied a blackbird scuffling around in the shrubbery. I thought of the Early Irish poem known in English as ‘The Blackbird of Belfast Lough’. It looks like a typical piece of marginalia in its brevity and clarity, an example of how Irish scribes would sometimes so divert themselves from the copying of ecclesiastical texts. For all its apparent spontaneity, it is cunningly worked, written in the complex metre know as snám súad, literally ‘the swimming of the sages’, or ‘poetic floating’. I was familiar with Seamus Heaney’s translation, and I thought I might float my own attempt at it. And the poem suggested a fitting emblem for the Centre. Hence our logo, the elegantly spiky wood engraving of a blackbird singing from a ‘whin’, or gorse bush, by the artist Jeffrey Morgan.

‘The Blackbird of Belfast Lough’ has been much translated into English. The versions in the margin of this text are but two possibilities. There are, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens, at least thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird; and the blackbird can be heard in many ways. Poetry resides in that ambiguity, and that is why the blackbird has been chosen as the emblem of the Seamus Heaney Centre, and its beak, neb or nib, as the title of the Centre’s journal, The Yellow Nib."

Int én bec

ro léc feit

do rinn guip

            glanbuidi

 

fo-ceird faíd

ós Loch Laíg

lon do chraíb

            charnbuidi

 

9th century Irish

The small bird

chirp-chirruped:

yellow neb,

            a note-spurt.

 

Blackbird over

Lagan water,

clumps of yellow

            whin-burst!

 

Seamus Heaney

the little bird

that whistled shrill

from the nib of

            its yellow bill

 

a note let go

o’er Belfast Lough—

a blackbird from

a yellow whin

           

 Ciaran Carson

Ciaran Carson (1948-2019) was our founding Director, teaching colleague, and dear friend. 

From the groundbreaking Belfast Confetti (Gallery, 1989) to his final collection Still Life (Gallery, 2019), Ciaran's work spanned prose fiction, memoir, translation, and poetry, winning numourous international awards and accolades, and covering subjects that reflect his astonishing range and depth of knowledge.

We will be forever grateful for his creative direction, intellectual rigour, and comradeship that we hope, still shapes life in the Seamus Heaney Centre. For more on Ciaran and his many achievements, here are some words from our colleague Gail McConnell. 


About
  • About
  • The Centre
  • The Blackbird
  • The Heaney Community
  • Literary Belfast
  • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre
QUB Logo
Contact Us

Seamus Heaney Centre
38-40 University Road, Belfast
BT7 1NN

GET DIRECTIONS

Phone: 028 9097 1077
Email: shc@qub.ac.uk 

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Study
  • People
  • Literary Belfast
  • News
  • Events

© Queen's University Belfast 2024
  • Privacy and cookies
  • Website accessibility
  • Freedom of information
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  • University Policies and Procedures
Information
  • Privacy and cookies
  • Website accessibility
  • Freedom of information
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  • University Policies and Procedures

© Queen's University Belfast 2024

Manage cookies