A NEW ARTS and literary centre due to open in Co Derry in honour of Seamus Heaney was launched tonight in Dublin.
HomePlace - which will be based at a former RUC station - will celebrate the work of the Nobel Laureate and writer. Among those at the launch of the event at the Royal Irish Academy tonight was President Michael D Higgins.
Seamus Heaney HomePlace will open in September in Bellaghy, Co Derry, where the poet spent his formative years and where he was laid to rest two years ago.
The programme curators for HomePlace are Sean Doran and Liam Browne. HomePlace has the support of the Heaney family, and is a project of Mid Ulster District Council, with support from the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure.
It will comprise a 2,000sqm building that will be home to a permanent exhibition. The exhibition will interpret Heaney’s work through personal stories and artefacts, family photographs, video recordings, and the voice of the poet himself reading his own words.
Among the artefacts will be Heaney’s trade-mark duffle coat and his childhood school bag, as well as a recreation of the his attic study in Dublin.
For the first year, the programme will focus on the theme of 12 Books, 12 Months. Each month will look at the inspiration for Heaney’s collections, starting with Death of a Naturalist, and ending with Human Chain in September 2017.
Chair of Mid Ulster District Council, Councillor Cáthal Mallaghan, said that by September, HomePlace “will be transformed into a place of learning, interaction and creative expression”.
We want HomePlace to be a fitting tribute to the man who has touched – and still continues to touch – so many lives.
Seamus’s son Michael Heaney said that the family is “so grateful that Dad is being honoured in such a generous fashion, and we know he would have been proud to have his life and work celebrated in such a positive way”.
HomePlace will open in late September 2016 and is expected to attract 35,000 visitors every year.
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