EXHIBITION:For Belfast's literary and artistic community, the humble, yellow-beaked blackbird has assumed a symbolic importance with the launch of a new series of artworks at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, writes Fionola Meredith
THERE ARE AT least 13 ways of looking at a blackbird, as the poet Wallace Stevens noted. And an unusual new art exhibition at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast shows that this darting, bright-eyed, familiar bird can be imagined in all kinds of unfamiliar and surprising ways. To celebrate the Heaney Centre's fifth anniversary, a number of local and international artists were invited to interpret the ninth-century poem The Blackbird of Belfast Lough or Int én bec, from which the centre takes its emblem. The anonymous ninth-century fragment has already generated many translations and re-imaginings, most notably by Heaney himself, and by Ciarán Carson, director of the centre, but also by John Hewitt, John Montague, Thomas Kinsella and Frank O'Connor.
Now the staid institutional walls have been enlivened by a series of colourful artworks: embroidered, stylised and radically deconstructed blackbirds appear around almost every corner of the rambling Georgian terraced house. Whether seen as illustration, interpretation or illumination of the original poem, each new spin is quite different from the next, says Carson. Paul Allen's piece borrows Heaney's lively translation - "The small bird / chirp-chirruped: / yellow neb, a note-spurt" - and sets it out in the style of an antique circus of curiosities poster; while Aaron Eakin's satisfyingly minimalist piece represents the blackbird's call over the River Lagan as a jagged yellow sonic wave across a soft grey backdrop. Meanwhile, New York-based artist Mac Premo eschews direct references to blackbirds altogether, instead offering a series of graduated wooden blocks, which spell out the words "I rather like that song I think I'll keep it for myself."
"The work in this exhibition gives the blackbird yet another lift off in its local Lagan setting, and is further proof of the staying power of this intricate, extraordinarily voluble little lyric," says Heaney. "Airworthy, earworthy, and now eyeworthy in more than 13 ways, it bleeps and chirp-chirrups like a pager from the past, 'a note let go' to keep the perpetual motion machine of art on the go."
The idea for this lively artistic exchange between creative traditions - in this case, visual art and poetry - came from Ian Sansom, BBC writer-in-residence at the Heaney Centre, who curated the exhibition. Sansom's enthusiam and imagination really is infectious - he is always fizzing with ideas and plans - and many of the centre's writers pay tribute to the spirit of dynamism, creativity and openness he has brought to the place. An established author in his own right, perhaps best known for his "mobile library" detective series, he is the founder and editor of the fittingly titled magazine, The Enthusiast. (He's also the man behind "Dr Sansom's Extreme Facts", which appears in the comic section of the Guardian newspaper, a column that is bizarre and occasionally rude enough to make it required reading for school-age children.)
"WH Auden famously said that poetry doesn't make things happen, but I prefer William Carlos Williams' idea of poems as machines made out of words, tiny little fleshly machines that actually can make other things happen. This exhibition is a good example of that," says Sansom. He developed the plan with graphic designer Rory Jeffers, whose work is on display in the show, along with that of Jeffers's artist brothers, Oliver and Brian.
"Once we came up with the idea, I made a list of artists I have already worked with, artists I'd like to work with, and artists who have inspired me, and luckily most of them said yes," says Rory. As he points out, good as the artworks look on the walls - where they are on permanent display - they are actually high-quality reproductions of the original artworks, some of which are substantial, even sculptural, pieces. He hopes that the project will continue, with the originals going on show at the Naughton Gallery at Queen's, and the possibility of generating yet more blackbird-inspired art for the centre.
Tucked in the corner of the School of English, on tree-lined University Square, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry is a unique institution. It prides itself not only on its reputation as a widely respected international centre of research, but on its promotion of creative writing as a living art, continuing the spirit of "The Group", that renowned poets' collective begun by Philip Hobsbaum in the 1960s, and attended by the likes of Heaney, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon and Bernard MacLaverty.
Certainly, the centre is packed to the rafters with a great number of important writers and poets including - among many others - Michael Longley (currently Ireland Professor of Poetry), Prof Edna Longley, Glenn Patterson, Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Medbh McGuckian and Carlo Gébler.
Each year, the centre publishes a journal of contemporary writing, The Yellow Nib, in association with local publishing house, the Blackstaff Press. "The genuinely interesting thing about the Heaney Centre is its culture of excellence," says Sansom. "Look at Sinéad Morrissey - she wins prizes like most people have hot dinners."
It's true that the awards haul is substantial at the centre: Morrissey is this year's winner of the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition (the biggest in the UK), and last year she received a literary fellowship from the prestigious Lannan Foundation. Novelist Glenn Patterson is the latest writer from the centre to receive a Lannan fellowship, awarded to writers of "distinctive literary merit". Meanwhile, Ciaran Carson's poetry collection, For All We Know, has been shortlisted for both the 2008 TS Eliot Prize and the Costa poetry award.
It's an impressive line-up. But there's a place for the young, tentative or aspiring writer at the centre too. Sansom takes the helm of the weekly Queen's Writers Group, which is free and open to all. Participants receive "both criticism and encouragement, not too much of one or the other", says Sansom. Young Belfast writer, Garrett Carr, has benefited from the group's productive atmosphere. His gorgeously illustrated children's book, The Badness of Ballydog, the story of the "baddest town on the face of the Earth" and the first of a trilogy which Carr envisages as a "new legend for a modern Ulster", is just about to be published.
The centre itself is a comfortable place, all battered leather armchairs and lingering whiffs of coffee. In the courtyard, poet Jean Bleakney - well known for her interest in all things horticultural, both literary and actual - has planted a small garden. "It's a home for all who are involved in creative writing," says Patterson. "We were a bit peripatetic until the Heaney centre opened."
The fact that so many writers are crammed into the space - "it's a wonder you can fit us all in" - is one of the things that makes the centre unique, adds Patterson. "The best thing is that upstairs, in my office, there's a really tiny door, about half the size of a real one, and if you open it up and go through it, you come out in Leontia Flynn's room. If I hear her whistling in there, I go in for a visit. It's like taking a holiday in a poet's brain."
As Flynn herself says, the centre offers "a room and a salary, and the possibility of conversation with writers I admire".
The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry is all about "art on the go", and now it all happens under the beady, yellow-rimmed gaze of a flock of blackbirds.
• www.qub.ac.uk/ schools/SeamusHeaneyCentreforPoetry
• www.atleastthirteenwaysoflookingatablackbird.com
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
Ciarán Carson