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Life
| [John Harold Hewitt], b. Belfast, 96 Clifton Park Ave.; son of principal of Agnes St. Methodist Primary School, a man of ‘sensible religion’; descended from family with earlier Quaker connections settled in Armagh, c.1610; his great-grandmother died of fever contracted caring for famine victims, 1847 [‘And that chance meeting, that brief confrontation, / Conscribed me of the Irishry forever’]; his grandfather John Hewitt was a seedsman, who moved to Scotland and returned to Belfast, 1885; his children incl. Robert, Hewitt’s father, with his wife Elinor (née Robinson, m. 12 July 1900); Robert attended teacher-training college in Dublin, and took his first post at Sandy Row Nat. School (Hurst St.); Elinor’s brother John ran the family foundry and built houses for his mother and himself; not baptised due to his father’s dispute with the Methodist minister; |
| ed. Agnes St., briefly at Belfast Acad. Inst., 1919-20, and thereafter at Methodist College, 1920-24, under the headship of James Watson Henderson (memorialised in ‘A Great Schoolmaster’); attended courses in Belfast College of Technology in his final year before entering QUB, where he studied History; spent 1927-29 at Stranmillis TTC, and grad. QUB, 1930; visits Paris with his father, 1929; writes letters on poetry to Belfast Telegraph, June-Dec. 1926; exchanges caustic correspondence with Thomas Carnduff on the Belfast Poetry Circle, in Belfast Telegraph, 30 July 1926; sees exhibition of Nathaniel Hone, 1926; attends Northern Ireland Labour Party Annual Conference as Belfast City delegate, 1929 and 1930; wrote “A Chant for the Worlds of the World on the 13th Anniversary of the Revolution”; resists advocacy of Workers’ Republic in party constitution; travelled to Paris alone, Aug. 1930, and visited Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co.; |
| appt. Art Assistant at Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, Nov. 1930, then located at Stranmillis, continuing there during 1930-57; m. Roberta Black, while already co-habiting at 45 Malone Rd., May 1934; assisted National Council for Civil Liberties investigation into B Specials; poems in Poems of Tomorrow (1935); issued The Bloody Brae, a verse-play written in 1936 in amends for historical guilt incurred by planter stock in Cromwellian period and 18th century (later broadcast and produced by Lyric Players, Belfast, 1954, and published in Threshold, 1957); met George Orwell, 1936; agreed to edit Irish Democrat, 1937 (‘Proletarian writers of Ireland Unite! We must mobilise against War and fascism’); lectures to troops and joins civil defence, 1939-45; visits Glens of Antrim; formulates regionalist aesthetic; fnd., with others, of Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), and fnd. with others Belfast Peace League; |
| served as ass. ed. of Lagan, 1945-46; promoted belief in cultural regionalism as a precondition to any form of constitutional settlement in ‘Regionalism: The Last Chance for Ulster’ (incl. sentence, ‘I have turned to the land because men disappointed me’); issues No Rebel Word (1948); involved with PEN, in Belfast; taken from MA thesis on ‘Ulster Poets 1800-1870’, 1951; contrib. with other to The Arts in Ulster (1951); failed to secure directorship of Ulster Museum and Art Gallery, 1953, causing depression and marital problems; poetry ed. of Threshold, 1957-62; publ. poem “The Colony” appeared in The Bell (Summer 1953); unfinished autobiography, “Planter’s Gothic”,. in The Bell (Summer & Autumn 1953); appt. Director Coventry Art Gallery [var. Herbert Museum, Coventry], 1957-72 (‘One of the best things that happened to me’); became friends with E. P. Thompson and other left-wing intellectuals; |
| contrib. art criticism for The Studio, Irish Times, Belfast Telegraph, Art News, and Birmingham Post; contrib. “Frontier” to Poetry Ireland, 1962; joins Fabian Society, Birmingham, 1965; ed. and intro. Poems of William Allingham (1967); interest in multi-cultural integration stimulated by Lewis Mumford’s Culture of Cities; issues Collected Poems (1968); conducts ‘The Planter and the Gael’ poetry tour with John Montague throughout Northern Ireland under auspices of Arts Council, 1970; his poetry anthologised by Brendan Kennelly in Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970); returned to Belfast on retirement, beginning a period of intense poetic activity, 1972; published Rhyming Weavers and other Country Poets of Antrim and Down (1974), taken from his MA thesis; anthology and critical account of peasant verse flourishing in the North of Ireland in the 19th century among whom Henry MacDonald Flecher, David Herbison, Alexander MacKenzie, James MacKowen, and James Orr; |
| suffered the death of his wife Roberta, d. 1975; death of his sister Eileen, d. 1975; writer in residence at QUB, 1976, 1979; hon. docts. NUU 1974, QUB 1983; Freeman of City of Belfast, 1983 [var. 1981]; Gregory medal of IAL, 1984; called by Terence Brown ‘the chronicler of a people’s identity crisis’, though Andrew Waterman acidly remarks that ‘only Ulster could mistake Hewitt for a major figure’; acted in 1947 BBC version of MacNeice’s The Dark Tower; his main collections are Conacre (1943); Collected Poems 1932-67 (1968), and The Day of the Corncrake, Poems of the Nine Glens (1969); contrib. “No Rootless Colonist”, an autobiographical article, to Aquarius, 5 (1972) - named after a phrase in Ferguson [note]; poetry collections, Out of My Time (1974), Time Enough (1976), The Rain Dance (1978); rejected MBE, 1980; issued Kites in Spring (1980), sonnets of Belfast childhood with family photos; further collections, Mosaic (1981); protested against US military aid to South Africa, 1983; issued Loose Ends (1983); made a Freeman of Belfast, 1983; |
| issued Freehold (1986) [the title poem ‘Freehold’ [composed 1944-45], sequel to “Conacre”, explores his allegiances]; was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by NUU (1974) and by QUB (1983); Fellow of Museums Assoc.; MIAL, 1960; memorial cairn erected in Glens of Antrim nr. Ossian’s Grave; his personal library of 5,000 volumes is held as a special collection at Univ. of Ulster, Coleraine, and includes first editions of virtually every collection of Irish poetry published from the 1950 to his death, as well as many older works, chiefly of Irish literary interest; a plaque was unveiled in Coventry in 1998; he is the butt of satirical portrait in F. L. Green’s Odd Man Out (1945); Across the Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland, ed. Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley (1985) is a festschrift for Hewitt; Frank Ormsby edited his Collected Poems in 1992; a Selected Poems was issued by Ormsby and Michael Longley in 2007. DIW DIL ORM HAM OCIL FDA |
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| The John Hewitt International Summer School &The John Hewitt Annual Spring Festival |
| The John Hewitt Webpage |
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| The Hewitt Collection (University of Ulster) |
| The Hewitt Collection holds over 5,000 books and journals, with its emphasis on Anglo-Irish literature, is an invaluable resource for the academic community. It includes rare volumes from the 18th-c. “weaver-poets” and literary journals edited by Hewitt, as well as those to which he contributed. The library also preserves first editions of virtually every collection of Irish poetry since the 1950s. Go to the Collection online [20.12.2017]. |
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| Poetry |
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| Selected & Collected edns. |
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| Drama |
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| Miscellaneous |
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| Criticism |
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| Autobiography |
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| Sound& Film |
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| Articles (Selected) |
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Bibliographical details
John Hewitt & John Montague, The Planter and the Gael (NI Arts Council 1970), a programme of poems presented by the Arts Council in 1970 in a number of towns in Northern Ireland, consisting of an anthology of the two poets’ work ... provid[ing] illuminating insight into the cultural complexity of the Province. Poems included are, “Once Alien Here”; “The Green Shoot”; “The Glens”; “An Irishman in Coventry”; “Gloss, on the Difficulties of Translation”; “The Man from Malabar”; “The Long Bridge”; “The Search”; “The Watchers”; “My Grandmother’s Garter”; “Betrayal”; “No Second Troy”; “The Colony”; “Conversations in Hungary, August 1969”. Woodcut ills. taken from John Derricke, The Image of Irelande, 1581 Biog. as supra. Bibl. incl. Conacre; Compass; Those Swans Remember; No Rebel Word; Collected Poems (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968). [Linen Hall copy.]
| For Hewitt’s remarks on George [“Æ”] Russell, see Across the Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1985), Introduction [pp.vi-vii; as given under Russell, infra; also longer extract [attached]. |
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Criticism
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| There is a John Hewitt Summer School [link] |
Query: Terence Brown, ‘John Hewitt’, in DLB [?Dublin Library Bulletin] No. 27, pp.149-54 [Hewitt Collection, UUC], supplies commentary & bibl. |
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Bibliographical details
W J. McCormack, Northman: John Hewitt (1907-1987): An Irish Writer, His World and His Times (Oxford University Press, 2015), 340pp. CONTENTS: Prologue; Part 1: From Belfast, sent to Coventry ; 1. The poet breaks through: No Rebel Word, London, 1948; 2. Belfast beginnings, 1907-1929; 3. Ulster art and a wider politics, 1930-9; 4. The war years, including Cold War preliminaries; 5. In search of regionalism: Cushendall, 1946-50; 6. Disappointments, Stranmillis and Mount Charles, 1951-6; Part 2: Home thoughts from abroad ; 7. An Irish-man and -woman in Coventry, 1956-66; 8. Defending Barbara Hepworth before the ratepayers; Collected Poems, London, 1968; Part 3: Slow time ; 9. Return of a native; 10. 1974, and after Roberta; Appendices. [See Oxford University Press website - online; accessed 11.05.2017.]
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Commentary
See separate file.
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Quotations
See separate file.
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References
James Simmons, ed., Ten Irish Poets (Cheadle: Carcanet 1974), incls. ‘An Irishman in Coventry’; ‘Gathering Praties’; ‘A Victorian Steps Out’; ‘O Country People’; ‘Because I Paced my Thought’; ‘The Scar’; ‘An Ulster Landowner’s Song’; ‘From the Tibetan’]; see also selection in Frank Ormby, ed., Poets from Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff 1979; rev. & updated 1990).
John Montague, ed., Faber Book of Irish Verse (London: Faber & Faber 1974), incls. “The Ram’s Horn”; “The Frontier”; “An Irishman in Coventry”.
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, ed., Soft Day, a Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing (Notre Dame UP; Dublin: Wolfhound 1980), incls. “O Country People”; “The Scar”; “An Irishman in Coventry”; “The Sheep Skull”.
Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Gill & Macmillan 1975), [chap.:] ‘John Hewitt, Land and People’, with bibl. citations [of poems]: ‘Fame’, in The Bell, Vol. XVI, No. 4 (Jan. 1951), p.13; ‘The Bloody Brae’ [dram. poem], in Threshold, Vol. I, 3 (Autumn 1957), pp.21-29; ‘A Country Walk in May’, in Threshold, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn-Winter 1960), p.30; ‘No Rootless Colonist’, in Aquarius, No. 5 (1972), p.95.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: selects from No Rebel Word; and Collected Poems [163-66]; BIOG, 170.
Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1995), selects from Freehold [and Other Poems], II: “The Lonely Heart” [66]; “The Ram’s Horn” [68]; “The Colony” [69]; “Substance and Shadow” [73]; “An Irishman in Coventry” [73]; “A Local Poet” [74].
Kate Newmann, Dictionary of Ulster Biography (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1993), Heaney’s account of Hewitt as ‘the discoverer of the nugget of harmony in the language and ourselves’; also Longley, ‘John Hewitt the poet made himself heard in a land of bellowers without raising his voice. He held out the creative hand rather than the clenched fist.’
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Books in Print (1994), No Rebel Word (London: Frederick Muller 1948); Collected Poems 1932-1967 (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1968); The Day of the Corncrake, Poems of the Nine Glens (Glens of Antrim Hist. Soc., 1969); Out of My Time (Belfast: Blackstaff 1974) [0 85640 067 X]; Time Enough (Belfast: Blackstaff 1976) [0 85640 097 1]; The Rain Dance (Belfast: Blackstaff 1978) [0 85640 152 8]; Kites in Spring (Belfast: Blackstaff 1980) [0 85640 206 6]; Selected John Hewitt, ed. Alan Warner (Blackstaff 1981) [0 85640 244 3]; Mosaic (Belfast: Blackstaff 1981) [0 85640 253 2]; Loose Ends (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985) [0 85640 284 2]; Freehold and Other Poems (Belfast: Blackstaff 1986) [085640 362 8]; The Collected Poems of John Hewitt, ed., Frank Ormsby, ed. (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992) [ 0 85640 459 4]; Ancestral Voices, Selected Prose, ed Tom Clyde (Blackstaff 1987) [0 85640 393 8]; An Ulster Reckoning ((Coventry 1971) [2], 16pp. [0 950 1833 0 X]; The Rhyming Weavers (1979) [0 85640 032 7]
Hibernia Books (Cat. 19) lists Three poems in Irish Poems of Today (London: Secker & Warburg 1944); two poems and an essay on ‘Painting in Ulster’, in Robert Greacen, ed., Anthology of [Ulster] Writing (Belfast: MacCord 1944); ‘The Swathe Uncut’ and ‘the first Corncrake’, in Threshold (Summer 1967); ‘From the Tibetan’, and ‘Dying Art’, in Honest Ulsterman No. 1 (1968); ‘Secular Burial’, ‘Hospitality for E.K.’ and ‘Elegy for an Enemy’ in Honest Ulsterman No. 2 (1968); ‘The Search’ and ‘Alec of the Chimney Corner’, in Honest Ulsterman No. 4 (1968); ‘From Chairmen and Committee Men’ in Honest Ulsterman 6 (1968); ‘Here at the Tide’s Turn’, and ‘Mosaic’ (Dublin Arts Fest. 1979).
PRONI (Northern Ireland) contains c.115 personal, official and legal papers of John and Roberta Hewitt, 1904-1987; c.390 literary, autobiographical and miscellaneous papers, 1928-1987, including 37 diaries and travel notebooks, 1934-1987, and three scrapbooks, 1928-1970; c.1050 letters, 1930-1987, between John Hewitt and notable friends, professional colleagues and publishers; c.100 letters and papers of Roberta Hewitt, 1921-1975; c.2430 miscellaneous letters, mostly to John Hewitt, 1929-1987; and c.290 theatre programmes, 1930-1982. See Rascal - Research and Special Collections, Northern Ireland. [link].
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Notes
Samuel Ferguson: Hewitt appears to take his phrase ‘no rootless colonist’ from Sir Samuel Ferguson’s poem Mesgreda, in which the final third answers to the title of A Hymn to the River Liffey, containing the lines: ‘For though, for them, alas, nor History past / Nor even Tradition; and the man aspires / To link his present with his country’s past / And live anew in knowledge of his sires / no rootless colonist of alien earth / Proud but of patient lungs and pliant limb / A Stranger in the land that gave him birth / The land a stranger to itself and him.’ Also, ‘The Murmuring Liffey and the banks of Clane’ (Our itals; quoted in Peter Costello, James Joyce: The Years of Growth, 1992, p.83; see under Ferguson, supra).
Mary Robinson, while President of Ireland, paid tribute to victims of Warrington explosion by reciting Hewitt’s poem “Irishry” narrating the death of an ancestor who gave bread to an Irishman with a fever: ‘And that chance meeting, that brief confrontation, / Conscribed me of the Irishry forever. / Though much I cherish lies outside their vision / And much they prize I have no claim to share, / Yet in that woman’s death I found my nation; / The old wound aches and shows its fellow scar.’ (Irish Times, 11 Oct. 1993).
Aodh de Blacam: For manuscript notations on his copy of A First Book of Irish Literature (1934), see under De Blacam, supra.
Robert Greacen: Greacen writes that ‘He and McFadden try to break / The mould of bigotry’ (see under Greacen, q.v.). See also Greacen’s letter in The Irish Times (18.8.95) defending Hewitt against charges of bigotry made by Thomas Kinsella in The Dual Tradition: ‘... I never heard him utter a sectarian word or cast aspersions on the “native” Irish ... one of the most remarkable and tolerant Northerners of this century [... &c.’; see also under Greacen, supra].[ top ]
John Metcalf: in ‘North Down’s Literary Associations’ (Supplement to Fortnight, Sept. 1993), Metcalf notes that Hewitt spent six months in Bangor at his uncle’s house, Ellendene, 22 Ballyholme Rd., a period recalled in poems such as “Kites in Spring” and “Carson at Six Road Ends”.
Paul Durcan: Durcan’s ‘Hewitt’s Achievement’, Cork Examiner (28 Apr. 1980), incl. among review cuttings in John Hewitt Collection at Univ. of Ulster (Coleraine).
Seamus Heaney: Heaney dedicates “The Schoolbag” to Hewitt: ‘So take it, for a word-hoard and a handsel, // As you step out trig and look back all at once / Like a child on his first morning leaving parents.’ (Seeing Things, 1991, p.30.)
Namesake (s): An Elegie upon the most pious and eminent Dr. J. Hewitt (London: 20 June 1658), a single-sheet folio headed by an engraving representing the doctor’s execution [copy in British Library]; also [W. Prynne,] Beheaded Dr. John Hewytt’s Ghost pleading: yea crying, for exemplarie justice against the arbitrarie unexampled injustice of his late judges and executioners in the new High-commission or court of justice, sitting in Westminster-Hall, &c. (London 1659) [British Library microfilm]; Certain considerations against the vanities of this world, and the terrors of death, written by Doctor John Hewit, and delivered to a friend, a little before his death on Tower Hill, &c. [verse]. (London 1658), s. sh. folio. [The foregoing listed in COPAC.]
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