The Armagh Launch by the Mayor of Armagh, Councillor Charles Rollston, took place in The Stage Bar at the theatre on the afternoon of the same day, 22 May.

Let the ticket sales begin!

Such has been the demand for seats at the Poetry Reading by Seamus Heaney & Billy Collins on the opening night (Monday 28 July) of this year’s Summer School at The Market Place Theatre in Armagh that all the tickets on sale at the Box Office have already sold out! (The John Hewitt Society had, of course, reserved a block booking of seats for people including bursary holders attending all week and for those buying day-tickets for the Monday and weekly tickets.)

The good news, however, is that the two poets have agreed to do another Reading in The Main Auditorium, on the following evening, Tuesday 29 July, at 8pm. And tickets for this second reading are already on sale at the Market Place Theatre Box Office (028 3752 1821). The other event planned for that evening, a performance of Bob Kingdom’s celebrated one-man show, “Dylan Thomas – Return Journey!”, will now be performed in The Studio Theatre at The Market Place and tickets are still on sale for that at the Box Office.

While the Summer School organisers always knew that this very special opening night Reading with Ireland’s best-known living poet, Seamus Heaney, and the most popular poet writing in the USA today, Billy Collins, would have wide appeal, they have been overwhelmed by the demand for tickets from people throughout Ireland North and South and are delighted that they have been able to arrange a second Reading on Tuesday 29 July.

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PEG McCANN and ROBERT GREACEN

The John Hewitt Society has been saddened in recent weeks by the deaths of two of its distinguished patrons.
 
Peg McCann was the widow of first Summer School Director, Jack McCann, who founded the Glens of Antrim Historical Society in 1967 and, in the week after John Hewitt's death in 1987, proposed - with the support of the "Glens" Society, and of people representing all of John Hewitt's diverse walks of life - the creation of an international summer school in Hewitt's memory. The McCann family home in Ballymena - midway between Belfast and the Glens, between John Hewitt's urban and rural home-places - became the focus for "Hewitt" meetings for many years, with Peg providing continuity long after Jack's death in 1993. As a supportive visitor to the Summer School both in the Glens and at Armagh, and a valued presence at the Spring School in Carnlough since 2003, she will be much missed.
 
Robert Greacen, a member of the first of successive poetic generations to be inspired & fostered by John Hewitt, was born in Derry/Londonderry, an ambiguity he frequently acknowledged. Meeting Hewitt through the pre-war Peace Pledge Union at Queen's, he went on to co-edit Ulster literary-magazine, Northman,moving to Dublin where he co-edited Contemporary Irish Poetry (Faber, 1949), and eventually to London where he taught, wrote literary biography, produced poetry collections with Falcon, Gallery and Lagan, and fostered a group of leading 80s & 90s poets, since dubbed the "New Generation", through his now-famous Notting Hill poetry workshop. Retiring to Dublin in 1989 he became a much-awarded & much-prized literary elder-statesman and a patron of, and regular visitor to, the Hewitt Summer School at Garron Tower. He is remembered, like John Hewitt, not just as one who wrote honestly about life & times in the North but as one who kept the flame of poetry alive to pass on to subsequent generations.

 

 

On Monday 29 October 2008, the Ulster History Circle, sponsored by the Belfast City Council and The John Hewitt Society,  unveiled  Blue Plaques  at two city locations in honour of JohHewitt. The plaques form part of a Blue Plaque Trail being developed in conjunction with the City Council.The first unveiling took place at 18 Mountcharles at 11.00am, and this was followed by the unveiling at 11 Stockman's Lane at  11.45am.
 
Both plaques were unveiled by Councillor Michael Browne, Chair of the Belfast City Council Development Committee, in the presence of Deirdre Todhunter and Keith Millar, niece and nephew of the poet respectively.The distinguished contemporary poet ,Michael Longley, spoke. at both events

Councillor Browne said, "Belfast City Council is pleased to be associated with the History Circle and the funding programme for the Blue Plaque Trail. The city's blue plaques are seen as an integral part of the tourism offer for Belfast and they highlight and inform visitors and residents alike of citizens who have played a major role in the development and history of the city. One such citizen, poet John Hewitt, was honoured by the city as a freeman in 1983, and as Chairman of the Development Committee it will give me great pleasure to unveil these plaques to one of Belfast's greatest literary figures."
 
Tony Kennedy of the John Hewitt Society added: "It is particularly appropriate that this public honour for John Hewitt should come in this, the centenary year of his birth."
 
John Hewitt was born at 96 Cliftonpark Avenue, Belfast, on 28th October 1908 and educated at Agnes Street Methodist Primary School (where is father was principal), Methodist College and Queen's University, Belfast. From 1930 to 1957 he worked in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, and while living at 18 Mountcharles published his first book of poems, No Rebel Word (1948).

In 1957 he took up the post of Art Director of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, where he stayed until his retirement in 1972. There were further publications during these years - including a Collected Poems in 1968 - but his most productive period followed his retirement, when he moved back to Belfast (11 Stockman's Lane). During that time he published seven new poetry collections, a book on the rhyming weaver-poets of Antrim and Down, and monographs on the artists John Luke and Colin Middleton. Between 1976 and 1979 he was writer-in-residence at Queen's University, Belfast, and in 1983 was made a freeman of the City of Belfast. Hewitt, with his wife Roberta, was involved with organisations like the British Labour Party, The Fabian Society, the Left Book Club and the Peace League. He was an early advocate of the idea of regionalism inside Ireland and notably described himself as "Ulster, Irish, British and European."