What Seamus Heaney Meant to Me, a Kid From Carrickfergus

What Seamus Heaney Meant to Me, a Kid From Carrickfergus

As an eager, new student at Oxford in the autumn of 1991 I had arrived early at the Examination Schools on High Street to hear Seamus Heaney’s latest lecture as the Professor of Poetry. These lectures were free but you had to queue as they were always packed out. Heaney’s entrance was greeted with a reverent hush and then applause and he began by reading from his latest brilliant collection Seeing Things. The person sitting next to me that day w…