Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's

🏆Join us to celebrate the shortlist for The Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 🏆

Come for an evening of readings from our 2026 shortlist of the Poetry Prize, as well as announcing the winner of the prize.

The shortlist this year is: Chaotic Good, Isabella Baafi, The Storm’s Flora, Laura Wainwright Heirloom, Catherine- Esther Cowie, After Party, Dean Browne and Joy is My Middle Name, Sasha Debevec-McKenney.

The Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize is awarded to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning writer receives £5,000 and is invited to participate in the Seamus Heaney Centre’s busy calendar of literary events. This year’s judges were Nick Laird, Leontia Flynn, and Karen Solie.

To register follow the link below, or click the link in our bio to see all the wonderful events coming up this June:

https://www.seamusheaneycentre.com/Events/SeamusHeaneyFirstCollectionPoetryPrizeAwardNight.html

As the Digging at Sixty: From the Archives conference draws closer, we are delighted to announce our keynote speakers. 🐦‍⬛

We are thrilled to welcome Dr Rosie Lavan, author of Seamus Heaney in Society (OUP, 2020) and co-editor of The Poems of Seamus Heaney (2025), and Professor Geraldine Higgins, Director of Irish Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, and curator of the National Library of Ireland exhibition Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again.

Join us at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, on 11th–12th of September 2026 for two days of conversations, archival discoveries, and new perspectives on Heaney’s early work, his career in broadcasting, and the importance of archives.

We are still accepting paper proposals and welcome submissions from scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students. We are particularly interested in papers that draw on archival resources and encourage participants to visit our conference partner sites.

More information, including details on how to submit, are available on our website.

The Michael Longley Scholarships offer two scholarships of £7,500 on an annual basis to assist graduates to pursue the MA in Poetry: Creativity and Criticism, in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast.

Both scholarships are open to students who have already been accepted to the MA in Poetry. Both are dependent on a short written statement. Applicants must have applied to the MA in Poetry by the deadline of Fri 29th May 2026, the deadline for written statements for the Longley Scholarships is Fri 12th June 2026.

For more information and eligibility requirements, visit https://www.qub.ac.uk/Study/AHSS/postgraduate/poetry/ or email [email protected]

Want to come to Belfast and write about the future? has 20 funded postgraduate places with the Foresighters Doctoral Training Network and the Seamus Heaney Centre is one of the institutions where you can work, supervised by Lecturer in Creative Writing or other team members. More information and eligibility criteria available at https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/foresighters/

We are delighted to announce the 2026 Shortlist for The Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize! "As the world continues to experience political turbulence, The Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize allows us to get back in touch with the careful attention to language by which we might reset it. The award is a highlight of the Seamus Heaney Centre's year." - Prof. Leontia Flynn. We'll be celebrating the entire shortlist and announcing the winner at an annual Award Night on Monday 22 June and hope you can join us there!

Golden Seams, Reviewed by Nelson Ives.

So you said 2026 was the year you engage more with the community, but maybe you’re struggling with how to put that into action? Do you like theatre and/or storytelling? Then do I have an organization for you to follow!

Voicing the Void is an organization that amplifies the voices of the marginalized through restorative storytelling. And I recently saw their latest instalment, Golden Seams.

And the show’s calls to action and focus on community are strong, with stories covering a breadth of topics. Topics such as medical gaslighting to the justice system were told through a variety of mediums through the performance. Not solely limited to standard play format, but also bringing in art forms such as first-hand storytelling, dance, documentary, poetry, and visual art. The variety of which created some pretty powerful moments throughout.

The entire team at Voicing the Void and especially the women who share their stories throughout should be commended for the run. As it successfully entertained and educated throughout the night. It was community building, like telling stories around a campfire. This effect encourages you to let your guard down, sharing ugly truths out to a circle of people you trust. While in the same breath as you find yourself laughing, you find yourself crying, then feeling rage, then wanting to get up and dance, and you realize those sitting around the campfire are feeling the same way as you listen.

While the run for Voicing the Void: Golden seams is now over, if interested I recommend giving them a follow here on Instagram to stay up to date on any future instalments.

⚓️Reading Seamus Heaney: The Cure at Troy ⚓️

https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/Events/ReadingSeamusHeaneyTheCureatTroy.html

Reading Seamus Heaney: The Translations of Seamus Heaney is the second season of public talks and group discussions that will look at major works of translation by Seamus Heaney between the early 1980s and the 2010s. Beginning with an introductory overview, we will look at a poem or play each month, guided by Seamus Heaney Centre staff, visiting writers and other guest speakers.

This month we welcome guest speaker Doctor Eamonn Hughes to discuss Heaney’s translation of The Cure At Troy.

Dr Eamonn Hughes is a retired lecturer in Irish Studies at QUB and was Assistant Director of the British Association for Irish Studies. He specialises in Irish Literary and Cultural Studies, on which he has published widely, and his current interests are in Irish autobiography and concepts of place in Irish writing.

The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s holds a unique archive of broadcast materials, both television and radio, relating to the poet’s life and work. These recordings will be used to illuminate the discussions and provide context for the work we will be discussing.

With no specialist knowledge of poetry required, you can expect to acquire an understanding of Heaney’s idea that he wanted to ‘take the English lyric and make it eat stuff that it has never eaten before.’

Project Hail Mary, Reviewed by Anna Brolly.

Project Hail Mary, (2026) based on Andy Weir’s novel, is at its core, a remarkably gentle film. With much of modern cinema mistaking despair for greater cinematic depth, it is openly kind to its audience and holds fast to the quiet power of connection.

Firstly, you can’t talk about ‘Project Hail Mary’ without mentioning the visuals and the score- both as significant a presence as the actors. Both image and sound accompany the hardships, conflict, humanity and resolution of the film and it wouldn’t be as impactful without them. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the film’s premise is expansive-naturally- but its focus is very intimate. Gosling’s character, Dr Ryland Grace, is framed as an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances rather than a typical hero. The film centres his hesitations, doubts and most of all, humanity. In doing so, the film argues heroism stems from decent choices and actions- it highlights and celebrates being human.

This same care and attention extend to the film’s treatment of the unknown. The wonderful unlikely friendship between Grace and alien Rocky is founded on support and trust. It emerges through a collaborative process of learning how to imitate and understand each other. Their bond takes its shape through rhythm, repetition and a lot of patience, eventually becoming fluent in each other’s language. Rocky is given a voice, transforming him from entirely (and literally) alien, into a character that is emotionally legible. This alien language and identity is understood and adopted by Grace, what begins as difference becomes dialogue, and so grounds the idea that connection isn’t found in sameness but is forged through a willingness to understand differences.

The astrophage could easily have been presented as threatening, but instead is something wonderful (you know the moment I’m talking about if you’ve seen it). Everything in the film is imbued with a sense of awe, giving us a perspective where nothing is taken for granted.

Project Hail Mary insists, firmly, that hope is not naïve; it is necessary, and perhaps, in its own small way, quite extraordinary.