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OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE 23rd JOHN HEWITT INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL
 Tony Kennedy, OBE, Director of the Summer School, in introducing and thanking Nelson McCausland, MLA, Minister of Culture Arts and Leisure for performing the opening ceremony expressed the John Hewitt Society’s thanks and appreciation to all those who had provided funding and support in these difficult economic times.
“The John Hewitt International Summer School is only possible with the support of our many sponsors and friends. As always we are grateful for the support received from the Arts Council, Armagh City and District Council and the Community Relations Council, and the many Councils and groups which support bursary attendance at the School. This year we have also received support from private firms and trusts, most notably Ulster Garden Villages, the Ulster Arts Club, and Armatile. We would like to thank them and all the other advertisers and event sponsors named in our programme.”
The Minister, Nelson McCausland MLA appreciated that The John Hewitt International Summer School had become one of the leading attractions on the Northern Irish calendar of literary festivals and summer schools and was a "Five-Day Festival of Culture and Creativity".
The theme of this year’s Summer School is “Back to Uncertainty: Considering Other Possibilities”, an idea inspired by the late John Hewitt in his 1967 poem, ‘Hand Over Hand’. Among the high-profile speakers who will address aspects of the 2010 theme and other topics will be the influential literary critic, Professor Terry Eagleton; Conor Brady, former Editor of the Irish Times; art historian, Mike Catto, and Professor John D. Brewer, a sociologist who has written extensively on peace processes.
 It is appropriate that the theme invites a presentation on Platform for Change, and an environmental discussion on the Uncertainly of Climate Change, part of the Armagh Planet Earth Festival, with top climatologist, Professor John Sweeney and Dr John Gilliland, as well a discussion on “Changed Certainties?” with Rev. Chris Hudson, Billy Leonard, MLA and Malachi O’Doherty. And Malachi O’Doherty will also feature in a panel discussion on memoir writing about fathers, with Tim Brannigan, Eamon Delaney and Blake Morrison, author of one of the most acclaimed such memoirs, “And When Did You Last See Your Father?”
Among the well-known writers appearing at this year’s Summer School at The Market Place Theatre & Arts Centre, Armagh, from 26 – 30 July will be Michael Longley, Louis de Bernières, Eavan Boland, top American poet, Sharon Olds, Terry Eagleton, Joseph O’Connor, Glenn Patterson and Blake Morrison.
Poetry, as always, features strongly in the Hewitt Summer School programme and this year’s programme is no exception with readings by the award-winning American poet, Sharon Olds 9who will also take part in a public interview with Anne-Marie Fyfe) as well as Eavan Boland and Dennis O’Driscoll, two of the major figures in contemporary Irish poetry. The Summer School will also host the Northern Launch of Landing Places, Immigrant Poets in Ireland, which will be introduced by Chris Agee.
A popular feature of recent Summer School programmes is the series of Lunchtime Readings featuring some popular contemporary novelists which this year features award-winning Northern writer, David Park; Star of the Sea best-selling author, Joseph O’Connor; one of the UK’S most talented and versatile writers, Blake Morrison; the highly popular Scottish writer, Louise Welsh, and Jo Baker, an acclaimed English novelist who once lived in Belfast.
The attractive programme of evening entertainment will include a delightful presentation of Words & Music by Louis de Bernières and Ilone Antonius Jones as well as The Heartstring Sessions with top traditional musicians, Arty McGlynn, Nollaig Casey, Máire Ní Cathasaigh and Chris Newman.
As in recent years, the John Hewitt International Summer School has organised the popular creative writing workshops in poetry, prose, drama and memoir writing with Dublin poet, Paul Perry, novelist Heather Richardson, Armagh-born playwright, Daragh Carville, and Nessa O’Mahony. The prose and memoir workshops are being kindly sponsored by the Open University. The exhibitions featured as part of the 2009 programme include a photographic exhibition, Interpretations: John Hewitt’s Poetry, by the Belfast-based photographic collective, Image 10+, and two new exhibitions on WR Rodgers and Sam Hanna Bell from BBC Northern Ireland’s Community Archive.
AWARD-WINNING ONE-ACT PLAY ADDED TO
HEWITT SUMMER SCHOOL ‘FRINGE’
There will be a surprise treat at The Market Place Theatre in Armagh on Tuesday 27 July (7.00 pm) when an exceptional amateur drama production which has just won the top award at the UK’s leading one-act festival will be staged as a ‘Fringe’ event at the John Hewitt International Summer School.
 The Lurig Drama Group from Cushendall has just won the UK’s leading amateur one-act play award beating off challengers from England Scotland and Wales, to win the prestigious British Final Festival of One-Act Plays with their production of the Irish play ‘Melody’ in East Kilbride, Glasgow, with Adjudicator, Russell Boyce, highlighting the “superb quality of acting and direction” in the production.
‘Melody’, directed by Nuala Connolly and starring Rosaleen Agnew and Pauric Dunne, is Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan’s play about a prim widow and a clumsy bachelor who meet regularly on a park bench.
The John Hewitt Society has had a long association with the Glens of Antrim, with earlier Summer Schools held at Garron Tower and recent Spring Festivals in Carnlough. So, the Society is pleased to be able to add a performance of this hugely successful production to the JHISS programme as a ‘Fringe’ event so that people in these parts can share in the joy of Lurig’s recent success.
‘Melody’, which will be staged in The Market Place Studio Theatre on Tuesday 27 July at 7.00pm, lasts for 50 minutes and the performance will be over in good time for those intending to see the Louis de Bernieres’ show in the Main Auditorium at 8.00pm. All those attending the Hewitt Summer School as well as local drama lovers are encouraged to come along for this extra ‘Fringe’ event. Admission to “Melody” will be £5.00, payable at the door on Tuesday evening. Enquiries to 07835 073 616.
LAUNCH OF THE 23rd JOHN HEWITT INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL
AT ARMAGH’S MARKET PLACE THEATRE
 Over forty people gathered at The Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre on Tuesday 1 June at 4.00pm for the launch of the programme for the 23rd John Hewitt International Summer School. and was attended by many of those who had attended the Summer School in recent years as well as representatives of some of our sources of support and sponsorship – Pat Donaghy and Bill Nolan, the North South Ministerial Council, Helen Gibson of the Mooney Hotel Group and Armagh City Hotel, Jill McEneaney, Director, and Vincent McCann, Operations Manager, of the Market Place and officers of Armagh City & District Council, including John Briggs, Chief Executive, and Sharon O’Gorman, Strategic Director of Regeneration & Development.
Speaking at the Armagh Launch, Tony Kennedy, Director of the Summer School, was very upbeat about the variety of what the 2010 programme had to offer, and expressed the John Hewitt Society’s thanks and appreciation to all those who had provided funding and support in these difficult economic times. He paid particular tribute to officers of Armagh City & District Council and staff of The Market Place for their support and guidance on many matters relating to the progress of the Summer School.
“The John Hewitt International Summer School is only possible with the support of our many sponsors and friends. As always we are grateful for the support received from the Arts Council, Armagh City and District Council and the Community Relations Council, and the many Councils and groups which support bursary attendance at the School. This year we have also received support from private firms and trusts, most notably Ulster Garden Villages, the Ulster Arts Club, and Armatile. We would like to thank them and all the other advertisers and event sponsors named in our attractive programme.”
 Councillor Thomas O’Hanlon, Mayor of Armagh City and District Council, expressed his own delight at Armagh’s hosting of the 23rd John Hewitt International Summer School. He acknowledged the huge steps the John Hewitt Society had taken not only to attract visitors from all over to Armagh but to also involve and reach out to the Armagh community in so many ways in recent years. He was pleased that the Hewitt Summer School was associated with the Council’s own Armagh Planet Earth Festival and that its programme included a guided tour of the Earth from the Air exhibition and a high-profile panel discussion on the environment.
Photos credit: Liam McArdle http://liammcardle.photoshelter.com/
JHS PRESENTS SUCCESSFUL FEILE READING
FOR
JOHN HEWITT BAR'S 10th ANNIVERSARY
Belfast-based poets, Frank Ormsby and Eilish Martin, were the guests at a special poetry event organised on Sunday 7 February to celebrate the Society’s successful association with one of Northern Ireland’s best-loved venues, The John Hewitt, which has been celebrating its 10th Anniversary. The ever-popular John Hewitt Bar in Belfast’s Donegall Street opened its doors to the public just over ten years ago and has evolved as one of the most popular hostelries and live entertainment venues in the city. In recent years it has been the venue for an annual John Hewitt Society’s annual Poetry Reading, held on the date of the late John Hewitt’s birthday on 28 October, a popular event which is now part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s.
On this occasion the reading was included in the programme for another popular Belfast festival, Féile an Earraigh and Sean Paul Ó’Hare, Director of Féile an Phobail, introduced the event and welcomed the Féile’s new association with JHS. Paul Maddern of the JHS committee introduced the poets.
JHS was delighted that two such highly regarded local poets featured in the John Hewitt Bar celebratory reading, Frank Ormsby and Eilish Martin. Frank had previously read at the Bar in November 2007 at the launch of The Selected Poems of John Hewitt, which he co-edited with Michael Longley. His most recent collection of poetry, “Fireflies”, was published to critical acclaim last Autumn. Eilish Martin’s most recent collection, “Ups Bounce Dash”, was published by the Summer Palace Press and was also well received.
The Society is grateful to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to the management of the John Hewitt Bar and to Féile an Phobail for their support for this special anniversary reading
THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY - PROGRAMME OF EVENTS 2010
The Society is delighted to announce its Programme of Events for the New Year which is now available to download – Programme of Events 2010
Dates for both the Spring Festival, Carnlough and the 23rd John Hewitt International Summer School, Armagh have been confirmed and, in addition to these main events we have several NEW events planned for 2010.
Do keep checking the website for further updates on forthcoming events and confirmation of dates/venues as applicable.
THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BELFAST FESTIVAL AT QUEEN’S AND POETRY IRELAND
The annual Poetry Reading to mark the birth day of John Hewitt took place on Wednesday 28th October in The John Hewitt Bar, Belfast. We were pleased that, once again, this year’s special reading, featuring three acclaimed poets, has been included in the programme for the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s which was launched on 26 August.
 Jean Bleakney is a Belfast-based poet whose collections, The Ripple Tank Experiment and The Poet’s Ivy, shot through with humour, tenderness and approachability, established her as an original Northern poetic voice. A third collection entitled Ions will be published next year.
 German-born Eva Bourke has lived in the West of Ireland for many years and has made a significant impact on the Irish literary landscape, with five highly regarded collections of her own poems and skilled translations of poems into German and English.
 Award-winning poet, Colette Bryce, was born in Derry but now lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. The most recent of her three highly regarded collections from Picador is Self Portrait in the Dark. Her poems have won the UK National Poetry Competition and the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2007.
ALL IRELAND POETRY DAY READING
Armagh City Chapter and The John Hewitt Society joined this year again with Poetry Ireland to celebrate the 2009 All-Ireland Poetry Day and present the County Armagh Reading, on Thursday 1st October, at the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Library, Armagh. The City Chapter and JHS were delighted that an audience of almost 60 people attended to hear the acclaimed poets Kate Newmann, Martin Mooney and Maureen Boyle on this special occasion.
 Kate Newmann was born in Co Down, now lives in Donegal and is co-founder of The Summer Palace Press. She won the Allingham Poetry Prize, the James Prize the Swansea Roundyhouse Poetry Competition and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2009 she was commended in the National Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry, The Blind Woman in the Blue House, was published in 2001 and a joint collection with Joan Newmann, Belongings, was published by Arlen Press 2007.
 Martin Mooney’s first collection of poetry, Grub (1993), won the Brendan Behan Memorial Award, was made a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His other collections were Rasputin and his Children (2000) and Blue Lamp Disco (2003). He was born in Belfast, grew up in Newtownards, and has worked as a civil servant, creative writing teacher, arts administrator and bartender.
 Maureen Boyle was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize in 2004 for an unpublished collection and in 2007 she was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize. In the same year she received an Arts Council Travel Award to travel to Leuven in Belgium to research a long historical poem. Last year Maureen, who was associated with the Summer School Reading workshop in recent years, completed a commission for the BBC for a poem to run through a documentary on the Crown Bar which was screened in October 2008.
  
PAMELA HUNTER
All who attended the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh or Hewitt Spring Festival in the Antrim Glens over recent years will be shocked and saddened by the sudden death (on Sunday August 23rd) of bookseller Pamela Hunter, a significant supporter, with her husband John Brown, of the John Hewitt Society and its annual events. The society was represented at Pamela’s funeral on 27th August by Director, Tony Kennedy, and committee members Maureen Boyle and Paul Maddern.
Pamela and John created Books Upstairs—their delightfully eclectic bookstore in Limavady, with its strong emphasis on literature coming from their shared knowledge of, and love of, Irish writing and writing from the North in particular—just around the time the Hewitt Society was branching out to Armagh while creating a one-day Festival in Carnlough. They immediately offered to support both events: a long early morning trek each spring with a carload of books to provide a magnet for Glens book-lovers between readings and talks, and the magnificent and much-photographed week-long bookstall in Armagh’s Market Place Theatre foyer, focus of numerous literary conversations between guests and attendees, local, regional and international, and especially with John and Pamela themselves, on what was past, or passing, or to come in the world of books.
Always up-to-the-moment on who’d written what—every guest, whatever their field, however obscure their publisher or publishing history, arrived to find their books on display—Pamela combined bibliophile enthusiasm with freelance projects in the music and film worlds and will be much missed by the Hewitt Committee members with whom she was in touch regularly, and by all who came into contact with her deep and wide-ranging, lightly-worn, literary knowledge and her outgoing, energetic, ever-helpful personality.
REACHING A WIDER AUDIENCE - THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY ON YOUTUBE
With special thanks to Bluebird Media, the John Hewitt Society has now extended its reach on a global basis with the first clip from The John Hewitt International Summer School 2008 now available to view at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZIxKy1_Eo
LAUNCH OF THE 22nd JOHN HEWITT INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL AT
THE JOHN HEWITT PUB, BELFAST
On Monday 8th June at 11.00am The John Hewitt Pub in Donegall St., Belfast was alive with the sound of camera shutters and bright with Photoflash as the new Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Naomi Long launched the countdown to the 22nd John Hewitt International Summer School to be held in Armagh 27th July –31st July 09.
 Tony Kennedy OBE, JHS Director, introduced The Lord Mayor on what for her marked an historic occasion for the City. Naomi Long was only the second female Mayor or Lord Mayor of Belfast since1842 and it was been some 28 years (1981) since the previous one.
In fact John Hewitt, poet, socialist and Freeman of Belfast would at that time would have been living in the city and it was he who in 1983 opened the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre who own the John Hewitt Pub.
In her own carefully researched remarks The Lord Mayor, Councillor Naomi Long was extremely knowledgeable about Hewitt’s poetry and his part in promoting the Arts, confessing that her own favourite John Hewitt poem was The Coasters. The director and committee of the John Hewitt Society were also very warmly congratulated on their role in promoting the Summer School.
The Lord Mayor asked to meet all the Society’s guests at the launch and the event very quickly turned into a really festive occasion.
LAUNCH OF THE 22nd JOHN HEWITT INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL AT ARMAGH’S MARKET PLACE THEATRE
The Armagh Launch of the programme for the 22nd John Hewitt International Summer School took place in The Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre on Thursday 4 June and was attended by many of those who had attended the Summer School in recent years as well as representatives of some of our sources of support and sponsorship – Colm O’Hare, the North South Ministerial Council, Helen Gibson of the Mooney Hotel Group and Armagh City Hotel, Vincent McCann, Acting Director of the Market Place and Jill McEneaney, Strategic Director of Regeneration & Development (Acting) at Armagh City & District Council.
Speaking at the Armagh launch of the Summer School Programme, Director Tony Kennedy expressed the John Hewitt Society’s thanks and appreciation to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for its continuing support for the John Hewitt International Summer School. The Society, he said, was also grateful to Armagh City and District Council for its ongoing support and cooperation, and to other major supporters of the Summer School, the Community Relations Council, Poetry Ireland, Armagh City Hotel and the Milestone Trust.
 The Summer School brochure was launched at The Market Place by Councillor Noel Sheridan, Mayor of Armagh City and District Council, who expressed his own pleasure at Armagh’s hosting of the John Hewitt International Summer School: “The arts and culture have always been high on Armagh City & District Council’s agenda and we in the Council are pleased to be, once again, offering our support for this high-profile festive event which celebrates the life and work of John Hewitt, a celebrated poet whose ancestral home was located in our District area, near Kilmore.”
Tony Kennedy also indicated that various bursaries are available to enable people to attend for the week and information on these are available from the John Hewitt Society on 07835 073 616. The Armagh Bursary Scheme, which allows local people to attend the Summer School for the entire week, will be continued in 2009 and bursary application forms are available from the Market Place Box Office, Tourist Information Centre or from the John Hewitt Society website.
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ARMAGH CITY CHAPTER
in association with THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY
presents
A READING by
JENNIFER JOHNSTON
in ARMAGH PUBLIC LIBRARY, ABBEY STREET, ARMAGH
on THURSDAY 21 MAY AT 8pm
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While the John Hewitt Society organises the annual JHISS in Armagh each July, Armagh City Chapter, a local libraries' group, organises literary activities in the city's libraries throughout the year. In May each year, JHS and the City Chapter collaborate and the City Chapter presents a special event in one of Armagh's fine library buildings, with the support of JHS.
For this year's special event, the celebrated novelist and playwright, Jennifer Johnston, one of Ireland's most admired writers, will give a reading from and discuss her work with the audience. Jennifer's first published novel was ‘The Captains and the Kings’ (1972). Since then, she has published many more novels, including ‘Shadows on our Skin’ (1977), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, and ‘The Old Jest’ (1979), set in the War of Independence and winning the 1979 Whitbread Novel Award. ‘The Old Jest’ was later filmed as ‘The Dawning’, starring Anthony Hopkins. Other novels include ‘How Many Miles to Babylon?’ (1974), set in World War I, and later adapted for stage; ‘The Invisible Worm’ (1991), dealing with the subject of sexual abuse, and shortlisted for the Daily Express Best Book of the Year Award; ‘The Gingerbread Woman’ (2000), about a widower who has lost his wife and child to terrorists; ‘This Is Not a Novel’ (2002); ‘Grace and Truth’ (2005); and most recently, ‘Foolish Mortals (2007).
Admission: FREE (Advanced Booking Advisable)
Tickets from Armagh City Library (Market Street), Irish & Local Studies Library (Abbey Street) and Armagh Public Library (Abbey Street)
Enquiries and Telephone Reservations: 028 3752 3142
THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BELFAST BOOK FESTIVAL PRESENTS VISUAL/VERBAL - A LECTURE BY RITA DUFFY.
As part of the first Belfast Book Festival (24th Feb – 1st March), internationally-renowned artist and
Royal
Ulster
Academy of the Arts president Rita Duffy delivered an illustrated talk on the influence of literature on her work. Rita’s work is rooted in the narrative/ figurative tradition, and she provided examples of this from throughout her 30-year career, also touching on the autobiographical themes of her work such as Irish identity, politics, and gender.
THE JOHN HEWITT SOCIETY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BELFAST FESTIVAL AT QUEEN'S
Our most recent event was the annual Poetry Reading to mark the birth day of John Hewitt on Tuesday 28 October in The John Hewitt Bar, Belfast. We were delighted that this year’s special reading, featuring three acclaimed poets with Belfast connections, was included in the programme for the 2008 Belfast Festival at Queen’s.
The event proved to be highly successful with a capacity audience attending the event with newcomers as well as familiar faces returning, including friends and supporters who have attended or contributed to previous Summer Schools in Armagh or Spring Festivals in Carnlough!
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Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast but now lives in Dublin where he is Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing at Trinity College. Points West, published this year, is the most recent of his seven collections of poems and Earth Voices Whispering, the first ever Irish war poetry anthology, which Gerald has edited for Blackstaff Press, will be published in November. |
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Sinead Morrissey is now based at Queen’s University and, according to the Independent on Sunday is “one of most gifted of yet another generation of talented Irish poets”. Her third collection, The State of the Prisons, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and she was awarded the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry in 2005. |
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Miriam Gamble, also based in Belfast, is one of the most striking of the newest poetic voices to emerge in Northern Ireland. Winner of an Eric Gregory Award in 2007, Miriam has had work published in various magazines and anthologies and in This Man’s Town, published by The Tall Lighthouse.
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IMAGE 10+ EXHIBITION
On Monday 8th September 2008 the camera collective, Image 10+, held an exhibition of images influenced by John Hewitt’s poetry in the John Hewitt Bar.
PEG McCANN, ROBERT GREACEN AND DAVID HAMMOND
The John Hewitt Society has been saddened by the death last year (2008) of three of its distinguished Patrons, Peg McCann, Robert Greacen and David Hammond.
Peg McCann was the widow of first Summer School Director, Jack McCann, who founded the Glens of Antrim Historical Society in 1967 and, in the week after John Hewitt's death in 1987, proposed - with the support of the "Glens" Society, and of people representing all of John Hewitt's diverse walks of life - the creation of an international summer school in Hewitt's memory. The McCann family home in Ballymena - midway between Belfast and the Glens, between John Hewitt's urban and rural home-places - became the focus for "Hewitt" meetings for many years, with Peg providing continuity long after Jack's death in 1993. As a supportive visitor to the Summer School both in the Glens and at Armagh, and a valued presence at the Spring School in Carnlough since 2003, she will be much missed.
Robert Greacen, a member of the first of successive poetic generations to be inspired & fostered by John Hewitt, was born in Derry/Londonderry, an ambiguity he frequently acknowledged. Meeting Hewitt through the pre-war Peace Pledge Union at Queen's, he went on to co-edit Ulster literary-magazine, Northman,moving to Dublin where he co-edited Contemporary Irish Poetry (Faber, 1949), and eventually to London where he taught, wrote literary biography, produced poetry collections with Falcon, Gallery and Lagan, and fostered a group of leading 80s & 90s poets, since dubbed the "New Generation", through his now-famous Notting Hill poetry workshop. Retiring to Dublin in 1989 he became a much-awarded & much-prized literary elder-statesman and a patron of, and regular visitor to, the Hewitt Summer School at Garron Tower. He is remembered, like John Hewitt, not just as one who wrote honestly about life & times in the North but as one who kept the flame of poetry alive to pass on to subsequent generations.
David Hammond, was a distinguished and supportive patron of the John Hewitt Society and a significant advocate for, and encourager of, all the arts and of innumerable writers and artists across the Ireland’s diverse cultural strands from the 1950s to the present day.
A folk-singer who drew on Irish, English and Scottish traditions he was part of a ‘50s & ‘60s resurgence of interest, not only in traditional music and song, but also in folk ways, in the lives of the rural and urban poor, in traditional crafts and occupations, and in shared local histories, themes central to John Hewitt’s work and life and to the poems of younger writers, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, whose seminal “Room to Rhyme” tour with David in 1968 was a cultural milestone for many in the North. Swapping school-teaching for a career as a BBC producer at a crucial moment in the community’s self-awareness, he went on to make programs celebrating singers such as Sarah Makem, painters Colin Middleton and Basil Blackshaw, and poet John Hewitt, before going on to become a director of Field Day with Brian Friel and Stephen Rea and to form his own film company, Flying Fox Films, in 1986.
David’s personality and his encouragement of creative talent, as much as his restless explorations of music, culture and ordinary life, have made an immeasurable contribution to life in the part of the world he grew up in, and loved.
DOUBLE BLUE PLAQUE FOR ULSTER POET JOHN HEWITT
On Monday 29 October 2008, the Ulster History Circle, sponsored by the Belfast City Council and The John Hewitt Society, unveiled Blue Plaques at two city locations in honour of JohHewitt. The plaques form part of a Blue Plaque Trail being developed in conjunction with the City Council.The first unveiling took place at 18 Mountcharles at 11.00am, and this was followed by the unveiling at 11 Stockman's Lane at 11.45am.
Both plaques were unveiled by Councillor Michael Browne, Chair of the Belfast City Council Development Committee, in the presence of Deirdre Todhunter and Keith Millar, niece and nephew of the poet respectively.The distinguished contemporary poet ,Michael Longley, spoke. at both events
Councillor Browne said, "Belfast City Council is pleased to be associated with the History Circle and the funding programme for the Blue Plaque Trail. The city's blue plaques are seen as an integral part of the tourism offer for Belfast and they highlight and inform visitors and residents alike of citizens who have played a major role in the development and history of the city. One such citizen, poet John Hewitt, was honoured by the city as a freeman in 1983, and as Chairman of the Development Committee it will give me great pleasure to unveil these plaques to one of Belfast's greatest literary figures."
Tony Kennedy of the John Hewitt Society added: "It is particularly appropriate that this public honour for John Hewitt should come in this, the centenary year of his birth."
John Hewitt was born at 96 Cliftonpark Avenue, Belfast, on 28th October 1908 and educated at Agnes Street Methodist Primary School (where is father was principal), Methodist College and Queen's University, Belfast. From 1930 to 1957 he worked in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, and while living at 18 Mountcharles published his first book of poems, No Rebel Word (1948).
In 1957 he took up the post of Art Director of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, where he stayed until his retirement in 1972. There were further publications during these years - including a Collected Poems in 1968 - but his most productive period followed his retirement, when he moved back to Belfast (11 Stockman's Lane). During that time he published seven new poetry collections, a book on the rhyming weaver-poets of Antrim and Down, and monographs on the artists John Luke and Colin Middleton. Between 1976 and 1979 he was writer-in-residence at Queen's University, Belfast, and in 1983 was made a freeman of the City of Belfast. Hewitt, with his wife Roberta, was involved with organisations like the British Labour Party, The Fabian Society, the Left Book Club and the Peace League. He was an early advocate of the idea of regionalism inside Ireland and notably described himself as "Ulster, Irish, British and European."
PRONI CELEBRATES JOHN HEWITT
The John Hewitt archive at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is comprised of the personal, legal and literary papers of the celebrated Ulster poet, journalist, author and broadcaster. (Reference number:D/3838). This substantial archive, which runs to over 7,000 documents, should appeal to students interested in the development and analysis of Ulster poetry stretching right back to the Rhyming Weaver Poets of the 19th Century. The archive is particularl notable for its valuable series of correspondene with leading figures within Ulster's cultural circles.
As a tribute to John Hewitt and to raise awareness of this important archive, the Public Reords Office of Northern Ireland has published an information leaflet on John Hewitt and the archive, along with an accompanying postcard, and these were launched at the 2006 Summer School in Armagh by Grace McGrath who has researched and written the material in the attractive leaflet.
For copes and further information, contact - Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, 66 Balmoral Avenue, Malone Lower, Belfast BT9 6NY.
Tel: 028 90 255905 Fax: 028 90 255999
email: proni@dcalni.gov.uk
Web: www.proni.gov.uk
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