Madam, - As chair of the committee for the Louis MacNeice Centenary Conference and Celebration (Queen's University, September 12-15th last), I question the alleged lack of centenary buzz in what MacNeice called "my Ireland". Of course, more can always be done. But, starting from Wesley Boyd's Irishman's Diary (December 31st), most comment on the matter has been under-informed. It's true that celebrations mainly took place in the North, and cultural events beyond Dublin radar somehow don't count. Yet the MacNeice readings at Dún Laoghaire's Poetry Now festival had a powerful impact, a plaque was unveiled in Galway, and The Irish Timesshould not forget its own coverage - especially Eileen Battersby's fine articles. A large number of people from the Republic attended the centenary conference.
Seamus Dooley's remarks about Carrickfergus's neglect (January 8th) particularly need correction. Helen Rankin curated a superb centenary exhibition in Carrickfergus Museum and Civic Centre. Her community outreach programme included a poet working in Carrickfergus schools, a performance of MacNeice's celebrated radio play The Dark Tower, and talks to Carrickfergus Historical Society. Carrickfergus Borough Council also supported the Queen's conference, as did the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ireland Funds, BBC Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.
BBC Northern Ireland organised another splendid exhibition (a touring exhibition on MacNeice and the BBC), and produced a wide range of radio programmes about MacNeice and his legacy. It has set up a BBC writer-in-residence at Queen's in memory of MacNeice, and an annual MacNeice memorial lecture. Belfast City Council generously hosted a civic dinner to honour the centenaries of MacNeice and John Hewitt.
As for the conference itself, what Wesley Boyd drably calls "a few days of activities at Queen's University" was a programme of talks and readings by poets and academics such as Simon Armitage, Terence Brown, Valentine Cunningham, Paul Farley, Seamus Heaney, Nick Laird, Thomas McCarthy, Peter McDonald, Medbh McGuckian, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Sinead Morrissey, Richard Murphy, Don Paterson, Jon Stallworthy and Clair Wills. Poets also read at MacNeice's grave in the churchyard of Christ Church, Carrowdore, Co Down: an unforgettable occasion.
Perhaps 2007 was Louis MacNeice's literary and political moment. At the conference, his Irish and British poet-fans personified the variousness of his posterity. Similarly, the changing North is ever more clearly the place where the complexities of MacNeice's own Irishness and Britishness resonate, and from which they radiate. His centenary year reminded us how accurately he criticised the paralysis to which most Irish politics succumbed after 1921. MacNeice read Ireland in ways that may explain why Ireland has sometimes been slow to read him. - Yours, etc,
EDNA LONGLEY,
Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry,
School of English,
Queen's University,
Belfast.