Fine Lawns of Elocution

Fine Lawns of Elocution from

Ministry of Fear Singing School

This image was reproduced in Queens University magazine “The Graduate” in late 2013: a Heaney commemorative issue. The accompanying quote went as follows with a minor edit:

"Those hobnailed boots from beyond the mountain

Were walking, by God, all over the fine lawns of elocution”

In the “Ministry of Fear” a quite biographical poem, the quotation refers, I believe, to his coming up to Queens."

The Lanyon building at Queen's University with its fine lawns is based on my own photographs and the boot is one of mine, adorned with hobs etc. supplied by a kindly shoemaker in Belfast. Some of the imagery from Seamus Heaney’s early poems resonates with me; similar background, from a farm in Co Derry, then from the scarp of St Columb’s to the fine lawns of Queens. I

The poem is from Ministry of Fear, part of Singing School, in North, published first in 1975 by Faber & Faber Limited.

Prints are available Home