The next few weeks bring two exciting literary celebrations to the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University. Join us in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre for the Belfast book launches of new titles by two of Belfast’s most distinguished writers.
New Selected Poems by Medbh McGuckian
5.30pm, Wedenesday, 19 November 2025
Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s
Introduced by Peter Fallon and Leontia Flynn
For almost fifty years Medbh McGuckian’s poems have dazzled and beguiled discerning readers. They are neither descriptions nor reflections of experience but, rather, experiences in themselves. They are not locations of meaning, but instead sources of sustenance for the senses. New Selected Poems (1978-2022), drawing on seventeen individual collections from The Flower Master and Other Poems to The Thankless Paths to Freedom, foregrounds more explicitly feminine themes in — as Paul Muldoon has said — ‘one of our most alert and alluring poets’.
The Brimming World (Selected Essays 1975-2014) by Ciaran Carson,
5.30pm, Wedenesday, 2 December 2025
Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s
Introduced by Peter Fallon and Gail McConnell
The Brimming World: Selected Essays 1975-2014, edited by Gail McConnell, draws on five decades of Ciaran Carson’s shorter prose and includes essays on enduring passions — poetry, language (including translation) and music. In this treasure trove are autobiographical evocations of Belfast, an impetuous review of North, assessments of Derek Mahon, Biddy Jenkinson, John Clare and C K Williams, observations on visual arts and — again and again — reports of traditional sessions in small back rooms.
This is a book that follows Ciaran Carson’s curious mind in ways that are as spellbinding as they are delightful. It is a windfall and a gift.
