Mid Term Break

Seamus Heaney Mid Term Break

The text from Mid Term Break used for the painting is;

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'

Heaney at 13 years old has just returned home from boarding school for the funeral of his baby brother who was killed in a car accident. I have experienced this handshaking embarrassment at the same age. The sickbay mentioned in the poem later became a dormitory in St Columb's College and I was billeted there in my third year in 1962/63. The young man near the correct age is my grandson, the “old man” standing up is a long-time personal friend and the seated man is Jackson, a heritage volunteer in the Lockkeeper’s cottage. The scene was staged in 2013 in the Lockkeepers cottage a heritage building along the Lagan towpath in Lagan Valley Regional Park. It has a low ceiling, stone floor and period furniture.

Mid Term Break was published in Eleven Poems by Festival Publications Queens University of Belfast with permission from Faber & Faber Limited to “print these poems from Death of a Naturalist” who first published it in 1966.

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