THE BELFAST GROUP: A RECOLLECTION PHILIP HOBSBAUM i came to live in Northern Ireland in 1962. At that point, though a good deal of political and artistic activity was taking place, it was curiously fragmented . This was a result of sectarianism in schooling, disparate communities , and loyalty of individuals to their various sects. People belonging to different communities, whatever interests they had in common, were unlikely to meet. To start any venture without paying regard to the several communities whose people might be involved seemed a virtual impossibility . I was told by more than one person that Catholics and Protestants would never meet under one roof—for any purpose. The Belfast Group, among its other achievements, proved these ill-wishers wrong. The Group was an ad hoc association of writers loosely connected with Queen’s University; it met eight times each term, week by week, on a weeknight. The idea was that each person would contribute a number of poems, a short story, part of a novel, or part of a play. Contributions were duplicated and circulated before the meeting at which the item in question was to feature. The works circulated were by those likely to attend the meeting. Each meeting consisted of an author reading out the item or items he or she had contributed, and each reading was followed by a discussion. Because participants had before them a copy of the work read, the discussion could be specific and closely related to the text. The discussion, of about an hour, was followed by a break during which coffee was served. After the break, participants would, in turn, read out poems or a prose piece that they had brought along: something written by a classic or modern author, or, indeed, something composed by the reader. The Group ran under my aegis from October 1963 to March 1966, after which I left Belfast to assume another lectureship at the University of Glasgow . The Group met for a period covering eight terms, during which twenty-eight contributors read and discussed a total of sixty-four scripts. THE BELFAST GROUP: A RECOLLECTION 173 Seamus Heaney, then a recent graduate, produced seven scripts and consequently read and had his work discussed at seven meetings. So did the short-story writer John Bond, then an undergraduate. Michael Longley, whom I had met through his wife Edna, a colleague of mine, produced four scripts, as did Stewart Parker, a research student of mine who was studying nonrealistic drama. Four scripts apiece were contributed by Bernard Mac Laverty, who was then a laboratory assistant in the Queen’s Medical Faculty, and by Hugh T. Bredin, a research student in philosophy who shared a flat with Seamus Heaney. The Professor of Spanish Arthur Terry produced three scripts, as did Maurice Gallagher, a student who wrote short stories, and Joan Newmann, a civil servant whom I had met through classes in the Adult Education Department. I produced three scripts myself , all of them sheaves of poems. As this list of names suggests, the Belfast Group was fairly eclectic. In particular, I had little idea of the ground I was breaking when I invited people from both Catholic and Protestant communities, or from no community at all, to take part. Although these individuals might have met one another if there had been no group, it seems unlikely. In any case, the fortuitous encounter can be a fruitful outcome of relatively informal proceedings, such as these were. Membership was at the invitation of the chairman, who based his decisions on his apprehension not only of the quality of the writer, but also on that writer’s promise. A few of the participants, notably Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, had already published some work. Creativity was in the air, north and south of the border. There was Poetry Ireland, a literary magazine based in Dublin. There was the Queen’s University Festival. Also, a number of writers who did not attend the group were nevertheless friendly with one or another of the participants. And there was a highly positive radio program, The Arts in Ulster, to which several of us contributed . The number of writers who emerged from the group...