Collected Poems of John Hewitt

by John Harold Hewitt, Frank Ormsby (Editor)

Genres: Poetry

708 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

John Harold Hewitt, who was born in Belfast, was the most significant Belfast poet to emerge before the 1960s generation of Northern Irish poets that included Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. He was appointed the first writer-in-residence at Queen's University Belfast in 1976. His collections include The Day of the Corncrake (1969) and Out of My Time: Poems 1969 to 1974 (1974). He was also made a Freeman of the City of Belfast in 1983, and was awarded honorary doctorates the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast.

From November 1930 to 1957, Hewitt held positions in the Belfast Museum & Art Gallery. His radical socialist ideals proved unacceptable to the Belfast Unionist establishment and he was passed over for promotion in 1953. Instead in 1957 he moved to Coventry, a city still rebuilding following its devastation during World War II. Hewitt was appointed Director of the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum where he worked until retirement in 1972.

Hewitt had an active political life, describing himself as "a man of the left", and was involved in the British Labour Party, the Fabian Society and the Belfast Peace League. He was attracted to the Ulster dissenting tradition and was drawn to a concept of regional identity within the island of Ireland, describing his identity as Ulster, Irish, British and European. John Hewitt officially opened the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre (BURC) Offices on Mayday 1985.

Reviews

[Páidí Ó Madáin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dealing with death and displacement, love and loss in a plain speaking but moving way. Part of the pr0-peace/ anti-fascist movement of the 20s and 30s politicised by the great unrest and progressive family background. He struggled with the war economy, the fallout after Dresden in particular and the onset of the Suez, Aden, Korean and Vietnamese interventions and the reactionary nature of the newly formed NI statelet being an inside outsider amongst the Planter elite denied promotion in the Ulster Museum and more outward looking like his father remained in the Irish National Teachers Organisation post-partition. The 'father of Ulster poetry' from Heaney on but drawing down on the 'Rhyming Weavers' Radical Presbyterianism of South Antrim.

As a sidenote I feel a personal connection to both poets as I grew up amongst their wider family circle hanging 'outta of he backa treeactors' on the family farm and likewise know the young Craig family (the sons of his surrogate daughter Jean) who lived and holidayed togrther after the loss of his partner Roberta in 1975 and who was still living and contributed to the editor's introduction and his last 15 years or so was recounted to me by the younger son Michael while chatting and canvassing around Magherafelt. Pity his memory like Heaney's hijacked by certain political projects and cultural cliques which in life they were never a party to.