Belfast Group

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The Belfast Group was a poets’ workshop started in 1963 by Philip Hobsbaum when he moved to Belfast to teach at Queen’s University. The format followed Hobsbaum’s London group: each session began with a discussion of one poet’s work, then a break for coffee, followed by an open reading session. It met weekly, first on Tuesday evenings at 8:00, later on Monday evenings. During term time meetings took place at No. 4 Fitzwilliam Street, the Hobsbaums’ home near the university.

Seamus Heaney attended from the start. Seven poems in Heaney’s Eleven Poems (1965) came from the group’s sheets. Heaney later said the group helped confirm the idea of writing as a serious pursuit. Michael Longley joined after returning to Belfast in 1964; he said the group gave an air of seriousness and energy to writing, and that Hobsbaum could be very sharp in criticism. Other members over the years included James Simmons, Paul Muldoon, Ciarán Carson, Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty, Frank Ormsby, and critics Edna Longley and Michael Allen. Louis Muinzer was also a member.

In 1965 and 1966, the Belfast Festival at Queen’s published pamphlets by some members, including Heaney and Longley, which brought publicity to the group. When Hobsbaum left Belfast for Glasgow in 1966, the group paused for a while. It was reconstituted in 1968 by Michael Allen, Arthur Terry, and Heaney, with meetings held at Seamus and Marie Heaney’s house on Ashley Avenue. May 1968 saw the first issue of The Honest Ulsterman, edited by James Simmons. The Belfast Group ceased to exist in 1972.