Seamus Heaney’s Queen’s classmate reflects on his friendship with the 'popular, very social lad'

David describes Seamus as a “very popular, very social lad” but to begin with he said that Seamus was “a quiet country boy, initially.”

David calls back to a day in university telling a story about when Seamus stood in an empty lecture hall and “he declaimed Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill to great effect, which was an example of his formidable memory. He was wonderful reading his work, but he had a rich voice which wrapped itself eloquently around Dylan Thomas’ word magic. And he had forgotten about that when I mentioned it in a letter I wrote to him years later.”

David recalls that the first time Seamus’ writing appeared was in the third edition of Gorgon in November 1959: “He had a poem published in that and was quite uncertain about himself as a writer so he signed it ‘Incertus’ – uncertain. His first pieces were under that name and, interestingly, he started, if you like, his public career using a Latin word and, as has been published, his dying words to Marie his wife, were 'Noli timere' – 'don't fear.’ So that seems quite an apt set of brackets to me, the beginning and ending.”

It wasn't until a further edition of the now-successful magazine that Seamus put his name to his work: “I was on the committee and the sales were good at the time, so we had a more adventurous, attractive cover. I had the job of editing it in February 1960, and I solicited a contribution from Seamus. He wrote a neat little poem called Aran and that was the first time he put his name on a poem to be published.”

Their friendship endured after university through intermittent letters. Over the years the two swapped letters, which now can be used to show the success and confidence that Seamus grew into.

When Seamus had his first book of poetry, Death of a Naturalist, published by Faber and Faber in 1966, he wrote to David expressing how taken aback he was “by the great reception he got nationally for his work. He typed a few poems which hadn’t got into that collection which were then printed in the subsequent collection, but he wasn’t to know that then.”

Talking about the letters, David says: “I have a couple of letters which are quite personal where he opens up about his world, this is post Death of a Naturalist, in which he refers to how he was criticised for being a country boy because most of the poems are country-based."

They only physically met one more time, very briefly when David was Headteacher in a comprehensive in Teesside and took a minibus of 6th Form A Level English students to Newcastle where Seamus was giving a reading. They only had time for a quick chat as he had to get the students back, so they arranged to catch up in York the following weekend and go out for a drink. But it snowed heavily that weekend and, sadly, the catch-up never happened.