The Open Ground experience, a new addition to the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in County Londonderry, links Heaney’s poems to five locations in the local landscape that held particular significance for his writing.
The late Nobel Laureate’s poetry is not only visible in each place, where interpretation panels explain the literary connections, but is also audible with the poet’s own voice heard via listening posts on site.
The new experience, recently launched by Heaney’s wife Marie and members of his family, is complemented by a dedicated Open Ground app. It uses elements of augmented reality to add to the experience.
Open Ground, named after one of Heaney’s collections of poems, brings his literature into the landscape of his South Derry homeland for the first time.
A newly constructed boardwalk at Strand at Lough Beg, a place of ‘special memories’ for the poet, leads to a woodland pathway which gently opens out into a clearing with uninterrupted views across the lough to ‘Church Island and its soft outline of yew’.
A riverside path along the Moyola River, where the poet walked, fished and thought, is now also more accessible. Literature lovers can meander alongside the same river banks Heaney did, re-tracing the steps of a poet who was ‘at home on the water in all sorts of ways’.
Sculpture is at the heart of the remaining three locations, with a tall, steel structure at the Eelworks in Toome reflecting the poet’s fascination with both the lifecycle of eels and the fishermen who trapped them.
An alleyway in Magherafelt is now home to the sculpted silhouettes of people walking towards the town’s bus station which featured in Heaney’s poetry, while the well-known Turf Man sculpture in the poet’s home village of Bellaghy now has an extended and freshly landscaped seating area. The new space is ideal for contemplating both the art piece and accompanying lines from ‘Digging’, one of Heaney’s most famous poems.