Regional roots: the BBC and poetry in Northern Ireland, 1945-55

IN nineteenth-century France the salons of Princess Mathilde, Madame Sabatier, and others served as way stations between authority and art--places where the state and the writer could use each other for power, prestige, and influence. Patrons found themselves constantly intervening between the realms of literature and politics, securing protection for new artists while seeking favors for the established. Along with the artists came fashionable hack-journalists who, much like the state officials, possessed the power to begin or end a writer's career. Again, it was the patron's role to mediate between the artist and the press, ensuring a harmonious relationship on both sides. As the prestige of the writer grew, so too did the prestige of the salon to which he was attached and the power of the patron herself. Ultimately the salon is the place, Pierre Bourdieu writes, where

   those who hold political power aim to impose their vision on artists
   and to appropriate for themselves the power of consecration and of
   legitimation.... for their part, the writers and artists, acting as
   solicitors and intercessors, or even sometimes as true pressure
   groups, endeavour to assure for themselves a mediating control of
   the different material or symbolic rewards distributed by the state.
   (1996:51)

Over a century later a similar ritual of courtship between writers and the state took place in Northern Ireland, under the roof of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Belfast. There, during the years after World War II, power began to shift from the highbrow commentators of the London studio to local Belfast producers, men who carried their recording equipment over the back roads of Northern Ireland to interview farmers, storytellers, and housewives. This shift from centralization to regionalization at the BBC was not specific to Northern Ireland--indeed all British provinces benefited from this postwar policy. Only in Northern Ireland, however, was the relationship between the writer, the state, and the media so precarious. Thus, like Princess Mathilde's salon, the BBC became a way station where the officially sanctioned ideology of the day--regionalism--was taken up by a group of writers outside of and often at odds with the establishment. By deftly operating both outside and within its constraints, these writers added momentum to a postwar literary movement that paved the way for the "Ulster Renaissance" of the 1960s, and they initiated a pattern of transcultural non-sectarian exchange between writers in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. The BBC was in many ways the Ulster poets' door out of the dark.

In the aftermath of World War II, the BBC felt its mission more keenly than ever; as its director William Haley said in 1945, it was to "improve cultural and ethical standards" in Britain (Briggs 1996:26). If fascism was the by-product of ignorance and moral decay, then it was the BBC's duty to improve the morality of its congregation. In order to accomplish this task, Haley felt strongly that the BBC should concentrate its efforts on providing programs that would appeal to all classes, not just to an urbane London minority. This meant expanding the range of programs as well as coverage. Thus regional broadcasting was restored in July 1945 to the three English Regions--North, West, and Midlands--and expanded to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The intent was to improve standards through competition, while giving listeners an echo of their own distinct cultures. As one BBC director saw it, regionalization was "a matter of great importance for the future of democracy" (Briggs 1996:26).

Before regional programming was introduced, BBC presenters spoke with upper-class accents. One staff member noted in 1950 that working-class men in Yorkshire pubs complained the BBC was "too much high-brow," just "posh voices talking down to us" (Briggs 1996:276). He recommended that classless voices be employed. Similarly, Andrew Stewart, who became BBC controller for Northern Ireland in 1948, noted that many Ulster listeners, with their distinctive mix of Irish, English, and Scottish idioms, felt alienated from the cadences of the BBC. On those rare occasions when working-class voices were used, Stewart still felt the effort was wasted upon his listeners; even Cockney humor, he noted, was not well understood (Briggs 1996:308). Such comments convinced BBC producers that using local voices on regional programs would result in a larger audience.

The war too had changed the nature of broadcasting, as commentators brought their microphones into boot camps and battlefields. The success of this technique prompted the Corporation to use a similar strategy during peacetime. As the war correspondent Frank Gillard remarked, "Our policy will be to get away from the artificial atmosphere of the studio as much as possible and take the microphone among the people" (Briggs 1996:89). The success of Have a Go, a quiz show first produced in the North Region in 1946, proved the profitability of such a strategy: the program, whose presenter Wilfred Pickles spoke with a Northern accent and whose audience members were all local volunteers, became a national hit after only six months.

The decision to use local voices was to have a profound influence on provincial creativity. By taking the microphone among the people, the BBC gave its listeners an echo of their own voices, accents, and dialects. As programs were regionalized after the war, their content was also diversified. In 1945 features (which had been part of drama since 1938) was made an independent department. Its manifesto read, "No program service can live a healthy life on an exclusive diet of classics. Radio must initiate or die, publish new work or be damned" (Briggs 1996:641). During the next ten years, the BBC remained true to this vision; from 1945 to 1955 more words were spoken in features, plays, and poetry than in any news-related programs. As Asa Briggs has noted, the degree to which the BBC committed itself to creative writers--particularly those outside the organization--was unprecedented in the history of broadcasting (1996:106). Indeed, the regional controller for Wales went so far as to say that "for the first time since the princely Welsh courts of the Middle Ages, men could earn their living by being entertainers" (Briggs 1996:106). Often it was the poets' contributions that were most valuable to the features department. Douglas Cleverdon, a member of features in 1946, felt that almost all the best programs he had produced had been written by poets (Briggs 1996:642). (1) Through the features and drama departments, then, the BBC was well on its way to becoming the most prestigious literary patron in Britain.

In 1948 Andrew Stewart became the BBC controller in Belfast and immediately implemented a regionalist policy. In a memo issued to the program staff at Broadcasting House that year, Stewart made his objectives clear: in the features, drama, and talks departments, the work of Ulster writers would be given first priority. Work by others would be considered only if it drew a parallel to life in Northern Ireland. In short,

   The main responsibility is to the social, economic, and political
   affairs of the people of Ulster: farming and country life are
   important. In literature and criticism they will compass writing
   with which Ulster has affinities, employing outside speakers where
   appropriate and on merit.

  (Cathcart 1984:267)

The idea that "farming and country life are important" is perhaps the most significant aspect of the memo. It meant that Stewart took provincial life seriously and felt this lifestyle should receive radio attention. He ended his memo with a firm regionalist pledge: "In brief we will put first things first, and the first things for Staff here are the search for and imaginative treatment of Ulster matter at a high standard of professional excellence.... Il faut cultiver notre jardin" (Cathcart 1984:269, original emphasis).

The decision to hire local writers had positive and far-reaching effects on literary creativity in Northern Ireland, as we have seen. Moreover, because writers from outside the province were turned away from Broadcasting House, local writers were given the chance to prove themselves without having to emigrate to London. Before the war, Henry McMullen wrote in the 1950 BBC Yearbook, "the 'imported' artistes were many and the amount of genuine Northern Ireland material very small. Now the country stands on its own broadcasting feet, with a preponderantly Ulster staff to serve the needs of Ulster people" (Cathcart 1984:169). The fact that local authors were preferred over those from elsewhere meant that BBC features writers such as Sam Hanna Bell were able to solicit both fiction and poetry from the literary set that congregated at Campbell's cafe, across the street from the Belfast City Hall. The results were immediate. By the end of 1949 alone, Stewart could report that twenty features had been produced and written by local authors on local subjects. Nearly all the playwrights employed had been from Ulster (Cathcart 1984:156) and exceptional programs were repeated to larger audiences in both the UK and abroad. W.R. Rodgers's Return to Northern Ireland, for example, proved popular enough to repeat on the Home Service, as were Sam Hanna Bell's programs on Rathlin Island and the Lagan Valley. Apart from literature, the life and times of Ulster also received much attention. The titles of such programs as Within Our Province and Our Heritage (a series, for example, comprising twelve broadcasts) reveal the extent to which Stewart's early policy of "Ulsterization" was an exercise in self-definition and, indeed, regional self-invention.

Stewart's commitment to broadcasting local voices in the local dialect had even more important consequences than his emphasis on regional programming. Advances in technology had produced lighter recording equipment that enabled broadcasters to take their programs into the street of the farm. The result was revolutionary. As Sam Hanna Bell remembered:

   Up to this time the working-class voice had never been heard in
   Broadcasting House, Belfast.... We now had a marvellous opportunity
   to go out into Queen's Island, to go down into the streets and have
   people talk about maybe innocuous things but the point is they were
   real people talking. (Cathcart 1984:154)

Freed finally from their offices, broadcasters traveled all over the country in search of material. This practice resulted in programs such as Provincial Journey, Village Picture, and Fairy Faith (a series which came ultimately to be regarded as one of the most valued records of oral tradition and folk belief in Northern Ireland). Rural and farming life also received more attention, in situ. Before the advent of the new recording equipment, farmers in particular found coming into the Belfast studios an intimidating experience; their trepidation affected the quality of the broadcast. Yet after the invention of the miniature tape recorder, broadcasters were able to interview farmers in their own homes, barns, or even fields. The result, as historian Rex Cathcart has noted, was

   that broadcasting on farming became widely listened to.... It was a
   great experience because not only the farmer felt better but the
   broadcaster himself got deeper and deeper into the way of life of
   country people rather than into the technicalities of farm radio.
   (1984:184)

In 1949 there were 260 such programs broadcast from outside the studios in Belfast (Cathcart 1984:156). This type of programming proved so popular that by 1954 listener research showed Northern Ireland was the only region in Britain where more people listened to their regional Home Service than to the Light Programme (Cathcart 1984:182). Clearly, audiences enjoyed hearing the voices of farmers against the distant hum of a tractor or the echo of water gushing from pump to bucket. Such images, of course, bring to mind the poetry of Seamus Heaney. The familiar sounds refracted over the radio must have given the young poet a sense of kinship with the rural rhythms of his own life. Instead of the stuffy London voice in the quiet studio, there were suddenly farmers on the air--men speaking in the tones of his father, voicing their concerns about herds and harvests. Such programs, which began the year Heaney turned ten, evidently made an impression on the boy, for in "Crediting Poetry" Heaney reminisced about the days when he "would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker" and "pick up the names of our neighbours being spoken in the local accents of our parents" (1998:416). It seems, then, that the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service might also have "set the darkness echoing" (Heaney 1966:44).

This BBC regionalist agenda in Northern Ireland was a result of a larger postwar movement whose directive came from the top, as we have seen. However, after 1945 a surge of regionalism swept through Northern Ireland, partly a version of regionalist movements taking place elsewhere in Britain, but also partly a result of the war itself. As Sam Hanna Bell ventured, "Perhaps it was a sudden sense of interrupted isolation, of being cast from the fringe of Europe into portentous happenings" (1951-19). The common goal of victory gave the province the opportunity to prove its loyalty and stamina to Britain, to the world, and most importantly to itself. This newfound sense of self-worth may have contributed to the provincial introspection and local pride that manifested itself through regionalism. In October 1945, for example, Northern Ireland Prime Minister Basil Brooke announced in a civil address that "There is no disgrace in being provincial. Give me the good red blood of a province that has a mind of its own, for we here are lavishly endowed with both character and imagination--and the language with which to express them" (qtd. in Cathcart 1984:136). Here Brooke challenges the traditional concept of provincialism as a stagnant state of conformity and instead links it with collective skepticism and non-conformity: Ulster is provincial, therefore Ulster has "a mind of its own." During these postwar years, Brooke and other leaders urged their constituents to look upon provincialism as a source of pride rather than an embarrassment, something which set Ulster apart from the rest of Britain--and, needless to say, the Republic of Ireland as well.

Brooke's Ulster "mind" was, of course, Protestant. Northern Catholic writers such as Patrick Kavanagh must have seen the danger inherent in celebrating the provincial and sensed that Brooke's proclamation would only encourage his constituents to narrow rather than expand their horizons. Kavanagh may in fact have been mocking Brooke's very words when he declared in 1952 that "The provincial has no mind of his own" (1952:2). For as much as regional self-definition might be a way to promote non-sectarianism by emphasizing a shared landscape, it was also a subtle manifestation of Unionism that sought to justify partition. The BBC thus had an ulterior political motive in promoting regionalism in Northern Ireland: to preserve the fabric of the state (Boyd 1990:205). (2) As the BBC producer John Boyd noted, "The emphasis was almost entirely on the 'Ulster' way of life, and 'Ulster' was defined as the Six Counties only, and the Six Counties were predominantly Protestant" (1990:57). He also claimed the BBC itself did not employ a Catholic in a senior post until the mid-fifties. "This was no accident," he wrote, "but a deliberate policy of exclusion. Catholics were considered to be untrustworthy for posts of responsibility" (1990:74).

Though Kavanagh famously took pains to distinguish the provincial from the parochial, many members of the Protestant intelligentsia saw no such need. They were drawn to regionalism as an aesthetic and ideological principle: the region represented not just a deep reservoir of aural and visual memory, but an anchor. None was more influenced by this view than the poet John Hewitt, a disaffected Methodist who believed the best course of action for the Ulster writer was to focus on the idea of a shared geography and folk tradition, rather than a divided religious heritage. Hewitt argued that the Ulster writer "must be a rooted man, must carry the native twang of his idiom like the native dust on his sleeve: otherwise he is an airy internationalist, thistledown, a twig in the stream" (1951:115). In poetry regionalism manifested itself through place names, idiomatic speech, and rural or working-class diction, as well as translations from Irish legends; in prose it often took the form of articles exploring Ulster's pre-Plantation history. Hewitt's socialism was part of the drive behind his regionalist campaign; for him a collective awareness of a shared history and landscape was the first step toward the implementation of socialist ideas. Ideally regionalism would encourage not just artists but citizens to overcome sectarianism and class prejudice; only then would Ulster achieve social equality. This vision remained central to Hewitt's philosophy, as he articulated in his 1972 essay, "No Rootless Colonist": "Ulster, considered asa region and not as the symbol of any particular creed, can, I believe, command the loyalty of every one of its inhabitants. For regional identity does not preclude, rather it requires, membership of a larger association" (1987:125).

Regionalism never gained the social momentum Hewitt wished, but it did influence writers like Roy McFadden, John Boyd, Robert Greacen, Michael McLaverty, W.R. Rodgers, and Sam Hanna Bell. During the forties and fifties, these writers devoted much of their creative energy to exploring Ulster's landscape and dialect, often through the pages of Rann and Lagan, the two most influential literary magazines of the period. In the first issue of Rann, for example, Roy McFadden trumpeted a regionalist manifesto in his editorial:

   ... we are offering this region an opportunity to find its voice and
   to express itself in genuine accents in these pages. The future
   rests with the small articulate communities that will crystallise
   out of the turmoil of our time.

      We welcome all Ulster poets to our pages. We invite poets writing
   with genuine accents in other regions, whether they be Welsh,
   Scottish, English or American, to join us. And we invite all
   self-respecting Ulster men and women to read us. (1948:i)

Seamus Heaney has argued that though Hewitt's brand of regionalism was "original and epoch-making," his vision was "slightly Nelson-eyed ... more capable of seeing over the water than over the border" (1995:195-96). Certainly Hewitt was trying to carve a space for his own planter ancestors, not realizing that true regionalism must incorporate the traditions and history of both Catholics and Protestants rather than some vague amalgam of the two.

Yet, despite regionalism's dubious political ramifications, it brought a measure of confidence to writers who needed to be convinced that their province was worthy of creative representation. In this regard the writer and BBC producer John Boyd wrote of his younger years in Belfast,

   I regarded Belfast as an incredibly provincial city which could only
   produce provincial writers of small consequence whose work could not
   possibly hold any interest for me. My literary standards would not
   permit me to take any local writer seriously, none being of the
   first rank. (1990:25)

This attitude would change over the course of the forties and fifties, as writers from Northern Ireland began to feel included in a literary movement centered on the concept of regionalism. This sense of inclusion replaced the sense of exclusion that had for so long characterized the Ulster literati (insofar as they existed) and allowed men like Boyd, Bell, Hewitt, McLaverty, McFadden, and Greacen to take themselves seriously as writers. As Greacen wrote in 1944, "Whatever the reasons, the life and character of the North-East have had for long an unmerited obscurity: it is high time that at least the edges of the veil were lifted, so that the world may have a few glimpses of the kind of people we are" (1944:i).

The BBC was thus not alone in encouraging local talent. Even before Stewart took over as controller, Bell and Boyd had taken steps to cultivate their own garden. Dismayed by the provincialism of Belfast literary life, the two (along with their friend Bob Davidson) decided in 1942 to start a new literary magazine by the name of Lagan, as noted above. Boyd was the editor and solicited work from McLaverty, Hewitt, Joseph Tomelty, Rodgers, McFadden, Greacen, and Denis Ireland for the first issue. Both Boyd and Bell were jubilant when all two thousand printed copies sold out, but by 1946, after only four issues, sales had dwindled to less than five hundred. Boyd, along with four associate editors who by then included Hewitt and McFadden, decided that Lagan had run its course. Yet the magazine had succeeded in bringing some semblance of coherence to Belfast's literati, who, though they knew each other and often met informally, felt they lacked a group identity as writers. (3) Lagan also gave Bell and Boyd valuable experience in the area of literary production, experience that would serve them well as BBC producers later. (4) Ultimately, Boyd came to believe it was his work on Lagan that had earned both him and Bell their positions at the BBC: "Without the unexpected success of Lagan, I do not believe I would have landed the BBC job. Lagan may have helped Sam to get his job too, for Louis MacNeice had a hand in that, and Louis had contributed to Lagan" (1990:56). According to Hewitt, by 1947 Lagan was also "the recognised organ of Ulster regionalism" (1951:115). As such, it was in line with Basil Brooke's political vision of regionalism and that of the BBC as well.

Boyd and Bell--Ulster Protestants who had helped preach Hewitt's gospel of regionalism--satisfied the eligibility criteria at the BBC, yet both men had leftist leanings. Bell had been involved with underground Marxist publications during the thirties, while Boyd was a committed socialist and unsympathetic to Unionism. The BBC may have tacitly encouraged this combination of conformity and radicalism, for although it aimed to preserve the fabric of the state, it nevertheless aspired to the highest artistic standards. In other words the Corporation employed writers whose outward shell of conservatism satisfied the establishment, while their semi-covert liberalism kept programs from lapsing into mere propaganda. This ultimately is where the BBC's power as a patron lay, for, in Michel Foucault's estimation, "what makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse" (1980:119). In fact Boyd claimed that the BBC in London often turned a blind eye to the eccentricities and extravagances of its writers, most of whom, he noted, "had a bohemian streak," thus condoning non-conformity in the social realm as well as in more substantive areas. He continues,

   Indeed it was a streak I found endemic in the whole features
   department, and producers like Louis MacNeice and Bertie Rodgers
   in London seemed to spend as much time in the pubs around Portland
   Place as they did in their offices in Broadcasting House. It was not
   wasted time either in London or Belfast and, to be fair to the upper
   echelons of the BBC hierarchy, at least some of them had a notion
   that drinking had to be secretly condoned as something mysteriously
   connected with the creative process. (1990:47)

The pub, whether in London or Belfast, was a place where BBC writers could escape the establishment. Boyd and Bell preferred the Elbow Room, as did MacNeice and Rodgers when they were in Belfast. In Boyd's estimation its atmosphere "was such a relief from the stratified atmosphere of Broadcasting House where people moved along the corridors a little too conscious of their status and responsibilities" (1990:90). Again the BBC played the same role as Princess Mathilde in her salon, mediating between the world of officialdom and bohemianism, politics and art, seeking an equilibrium between the two.

Though Boyd and Bell produced many programs about local subjects, they were not so total in their regionalist vision as Hewitt. As Boyd put it, "Unlike John Hewitt, I entertained no doubts about my identity: I was Irish and that was simply that" (1990:200). The remark reveals the extent to which regionalism had already been tainted by sectarianism and helps explain why Boyd and Bell resisted (to some extent) the ideology of regionalism. Boyd remembered that, "Sam and I were constantly exchanging ideas and trying to liberalise what we considered the narrow parochialism of the region" (1990:47). At the BBC Boyd was dismayed by what he defined as literary apartheid: the almost exclusive emphasis on Ulster, defined explicitly as the Six Counties and implicitly as Protestant (1990:57). Though the BBC did not want to air any "Irish" voices--that is, voices from the Irish Republic--Boyd managed to bring Frank O'Connor and Sean O Faolain to broadcast their work in Belfast. He also convinced the then editor of the Belfast Telegraph, John E. Sayers, to allow more liberal-minded, non-Unionist commentators to speak on his regular radio show, Ulster Commentary. But the BBC in Belfast would only go so far in extending its microphone to unheard voices: it was one of the cornerstones of the British establishment, a fact of which producers like Boyd were made very much aware. He writes, "Because Ireland had been divided into two parts ... the BBC governors in London seemed to imagine that Irish literature could suddenly be sliced up like ham to suit the political needs and appetites of the time" (1990:56). The authority of the establishment was particularly evident after a conversation Boyd had with Frank O'Connor (perhaps about politics?) in his office. The next morning Boyd arrived at work to find a note summoning him to the head controller, who told him that the loudspeaker in his office, which enabled him to hear what was happening in other studios, was also a bugging device. Boyd was reprimanded and warned to watch what he said in the future.

Despite Boyd's dismay over the BBC's narrow definition of regionalism, he too endeavored to grant Ulster writers a similar exclusivity. In 1951 he confidently asserted the strength and momentum of a regional movement with rhetoric that, curiously, endorses the idea of "slicing up Irish literature"--the same idea for which he had criticized the BBC:

   The separation of Northern Ireland politically from the rest of the
   country has had ... an interesting result in stimulating a regional
   movement, a certain attitude of self-sufficiency among artists and
   writers, and in directing their attention to what lies nearest to
   hand. (Boyd 1951:131)

Boyd also ventured that between 1930 and 1950 "more novels by Ulster writers have appeared ... than during any time previous" (1951:121). He paraphrased Hewitt's ideas involving ancestry and rootedness, urging writers to express themselves in their own provincial idiom:

   As the regional idea is fashionable again I should like to comment
   on it. Regionalism stresses the fact that a writer should be a
   rooted man; he should feel that he 'belongs' and should recognize
   ancestors of blood and mind. This idea has been applied to cultural
   activities in Ulster, and it has been asserted that we can
   contribute to modern regionalist movements. (1951:116)

Two years later, in 1953, the movement was still influential enough to merit an article in Rann entitled "Ulster Regionalism," written by Howard Sergeant. In the same issue Boyd continued to express optimism about the state of Ulster's literary future:

   I have no conclusions to offer, except to say that Northern Ireland,
   which is often regarded as the province of industrial progress and
   cultural backwardness, can no longer be so regarded. The future
   development of industry and commerce may be uncertain; what is
   certain is that a native literary tradition has become firmly
   established and is now beginning to flower. (1953:20)

Clearly the BBC's regionalist manifesto had filtered down into the work and ideology of local writers, and Boyd was one of the main conduits. His support for the regionalist movement in literature shows that as much as he opposed the BBC's policy of "literary apartheid," he had also in less definitive ways submitted to it.

Working within the constraints of BBC policy but at odds with the parochialism that policy encouraged, producers like Boyd and Bell managed to give local writers an international platform and a voice. (5) In Northern Ireland regional poetry received a great deal of attention after 1945. Between 1945 and 1966 there were several programs on (or produced by) Northern Irish poets, including one each on Joseph Campbell, Thomas Caulfield Irwin, William McGonagall, William Allingham, Robert Greacen, and James Simmons; two each on John Hewitt, John Montague, and Roy McFadden; four on W.R. Rodgers; and nine on Louis MacNeice. MacNeice, who joined the BBC features department in 1941, received the most sustained attention. Topics of interest included Yeats and Ulster, folk music and the poet, the Ulster writer and society, modern ballads, and poetry at Queen's University. A selected list of relevant regional programming is found in the appendix.

Such emphasis on regional poetry made younger poets like Heaney, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon aware of the fact that there were many others writing in their own backyard. When Philip Hobsbaum came to Belfast in 1963, he eventually introduced the young men and women in his writing group to these elder statesmen of the Belfast arts world, particularly Boyd and McFadden, who chaired the BBC radio program The Arts in Ulster. McFadden and Boyd became friendly with the group members and ultimately, says Hobsbaum, there was much informal interaction between the older and younger writers. (6) Heaney also remembered Hobsbaum and David Hammond as introducing him to Bell, Tomelty, Hewitt, Mary O'Malley, and other members of the older generation. Although Heaney says these writers did not influence his work, their presence reassured him that Ulster could produce artists of merit. (7)

Hobsbaum's introduction of Boyd and McFadden to his writing group probably helped pave the way for Heaney, Longley, and Simmons to find work at the BBC. By 1970 these three, along with John Montague, Paul Muldoon, David Hammond, and Stewart Parker had all read or written for the Corporation. (8) Heaney's poems alone received fifty-one readings between 1970 and 1974--a staggering figure when one considers that Ted Hughes was given only fifty-seven readings in the fourteen years between 1957 and 1971, and MacNeice only nine between 1945 and 1966. (9) The simple fact that a Catholic poet in Northern Ireland was permitted--invited, even--to speak to so many and so often is perhaps the single most persuasive piece of evidence that regionalism was, paradoxically, as much a force for change as it was a manifestation of sectarianism.

BBC patronage, along with publication by Faber and Faber, endowed Heaney with a certain credibility in the eyes of the British establishment, and indeed it was not long before British editors were inviting him to comment upon Northern Ireland in the pages of their journals. It is little surprise, then, that once Heaney was allowed to speak, he began to speak out. Many of his Listener pieces, written during the late sixties and early seventies, attempt to legitimate Catholic grievances. As the situation deteriorated, however, his comments became less apologetic and more aggrieved. In "Old Derry's Walls," for example, his anger is palpable:

   Two years ago ... I tried to present both sides as more or less
   blameworthy. But it seems now that the Catholic minority in Northern
   Ireland at large, if it is to retain any self-respect, will have to
   risk the charge of wrecking the new moderation and seek justice more
   vociferously. (1968:522)

Three years later, in "Christmas, 1971," he continued to appeal to British readers, urging them to tolerate rather than repress Catholic expressions of Irishness:

   A little goodwill in the Establishment here towards the notion of
   being Irish would take some of the twists out of the minority. Even
   at this time it is difficult to extend full sympathy to the
   predicament of that million among us who would ask the other
   half-million to exalt themselves by being humbled. (1984:32)

It is unlikely Heaney would have been given the opportunity to air his grievances so boldly in the pages of British periodicals had he not been promoted and protected, to some extent, by the BBC's patronage. That patronage would have quelled any editor's suspicions that he was an IRA sympathizer; thus he was given an extraordinary amount of liberty to comment upon the injustices endured by the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Regardless of whether or not he was a "token" voice, his articles gave British readers a rare glimpse of the political situation through Catholic eyes and perhaps helped legitimate the burgeoning civil rights movement in the North. That movement itself would, in turn, help publicize and validate the work of Northern Catholic poets such as Montague, Muldoon, and Heaney himself.

The BBC also gave Protestant and Catholic poets the opportunity to publicize their friendships. Heaney's presence alongside Protestant poets like Longley and Mahon, for example, broke new ground. In "Books, Poems, Plays" (1970) and "Soundings" (1970), the poets laughed, joked, and bantered amiably over the airwaves, making it clear to their audience that despite the political situation, Catholics and Protestants could get along. Whether BBC patronage helped to define Heaney, Longley, Mahon, Simmons, and Muldoon as a group apart from their southern peers is too large a question to take up at length here, though it is worth addressing briefly. Certainly the BBC, along with Philip Hobsbaum's writing workshop, helped bring Heaney, Longley, Mahon, Muldoon, and Simmons into contact with one another. One cannot underestimate the role that friendship (and rivalry) played in propelling these poets toward success. As Heaney put it, "we almost did committee work on each other's poems; they were circulated in manuscript form and sat upon, and before you had a book out your poems had been graduated and the canon was settled" (qtd. in Haffenden 1979:28). (10) The connection with the British establishment--via Hobsbaum, Faber and Faber, and the BBC--also gave the poets from the North a greater awareness of what was happening in contemporary British poetry circles. According to Heaney, this awareness set them apart to some extent from the Dublin literati. Already in 1977 Heaney could say,

   I think there is a recognizable group in the literary sense. This
   would include Simmons, Longley, Mahon, Muldoon and others ... I'm
   talking of a certain literary style which arose from the "well made
   poem" cult in English writing in the late fifties and sixties.
   Though harking to different writers all of us in this group were
   harking to writers from the English cultural background. In that
   sense, there is a kind of tightmouthedness which might be considered
   "Northern" by many in the South, but which is really the result of a
   particular literary apprenticeship. (qtd. in Deane 1977:61)

No one would argue, of course, that these poets ignored Yeats or Kavanagh, yet friendships with Philip Hobsbaum, Tony Harrison, Ted Hughes, and Fleur Adcock, among others, exposed them also to the rhythms of contemporary British poetry. And, as for models, one might argue that Heaney, Longley, Mahon, and Muldoon turned collectively to the self-divided MacNeice as much as the self-possessed Yeats. (11)

By featuring local accents and place names in their programming, the BBC empowered a new generation of poets to experiment with the accents and dialects of Northern Ireland, and with its voices and speech in the largest sense as well. Like Heaney's well in "Personal Helicon," such programs "give back [their] own call / With a clean new music in it" (Heaney 1966:44). Ultimately, almost every significant poet to come out of Belfast in the twentieth century worked or read for the BBC. These poets might have secured their reputations without its patronage, but the process would have taken longer, and their influence might not have been so far reaching, so soon. If not for producers like Boyd and Bell, who manipulated the BBC's regionalist policy to serve Catholic as well as Protestant writers, poets like Heaney and Montague might not have had the opportunity to air their poetry and grievances to the British establishment. Nor would Ulster audiences have had the chance to hear Protestant and Catholic poets cooperating over the airwaves. Ultimately, of course, the BBC's policy of regionalization did not preserve the fabric of the state, but it contributed to larger definitions of identity in Northern Ireland, and it preserved and enriched the fabric of poetry.

APPENDIX

Programs on regional poetry in Ulster, broadcast on BBC Northern
Ireland between 1945 and 1966. (12)

June 1946        "Ulster Poetry"

November 1946,
February 1947    "Writing in Ulster"

September 1948   "W. B. Yeats and Ulster"

November 1950    "The Ulster Poet: Joseph Campbell"

February 1951    "Contemporary Northern Literature--Poetry
                 Before 1939"

February 1951    "Contemporary Northern Literature--Poetry After
                 1939"

October 1951     "My Art and Craft--On Writing a Poem, by
                 W. R. Rodgers"

November 1953    "Folk Music and the Poet--Attempts to Provide
                 Anglo-Irish Lyrics for Irish Songs"

February 1954    "MacNeice's 'Carrickfergus' and Rodgers's
                 'Ireland', Read by the Authors"

January 1956     "An Extract from Autumn Sequel, Read by Louis
                 MacNeice"

February 1956    "A Critical Appreciation of the Work of John
                 Hewitt"

February 1957    "The Arts in Ulster: A Folio of Poems from the
                 North of Ireland"

May 1957         "Speaking Likeness--Louis MacNeice"

February 1958    "The Ulster Writer and Society"

June 1958        "A Donegal Poet--William Allingham"

March 1959       "The Arts in Ulster--Domestic Interior and Other
                 Poems by Laurence Lerner"

June 1959        "The Arts in Ulster--'Sight-Five Poems' by Louis
                 MacNeice"

April 1960       "The Arts in Ulster--'A Song for One Who Stayed'
                 by Roy McFadden"

June 1960        "'Like Dolmens Round My Childhood,' Read by
                 John Montague"

January 1961     "The Arts in Ulster--Robert Greacen, Interviewed
                 by John Boyd"

January 1961     "Today from Northern Ireland--William
                 McGonagall, the Poet"

October 1961     "The Arts in Ulster--The Art of the Modern
                 Ballad, by James Simmons"

November 1961    "The Arts in Ulster--Poisoned Lands by John Montague,
                 Reviewed by Roy McFadden; John Hewitt
                 Discusses his Poetry with John Boyd"

November 1961    "Table in the Window--Talks by Ulster Artists and
                 Writers, Including MacNeice"

October 1962     "Ulster Mirror--Writing Poetry"

March 1963       "The Arts in Ulster--Philip Hobsbaum Talking
                 about his Recently Published Volume, The Place's
                 Fault and Other Poems"

July 1963        "Ulster Mirror--Warrenpoint's Own Poet: John
                 Boyd Talks about Thomas Caulfield Irwin, Ulster
                 Poet and Songwriter"

October 1963     "The Arts in Ulster--Tribute to Louis MacNeice,
                 by W. R. Rodgers"

February 1964    "The Arts in Ulster--Festival '64: Stewart Parker on
                 Poetry in the University'

September 1964   "Ulster Review--Louis MacNeice"

September 1964   "Louis MacNeice in Ulster"

September 1964   "Today and Yesterday in Northern Ireland--'Ulster
                 Writing' by David Hammond, Parts I and II"

February 1965    "The Arts in Ulster--Writing in the University,
                 Philip Hobsbaum and Three Readers"

February 1965    "The Arts in Ulster--Astrology by Louis MacNeice"

September 1966   "The Strings Are False--W. R. Rodgers Selects and
                 Comments on Passages from the Autobiography of
                 MacNeice"

(1) Louis MacNeice, John Betjeman, W.R. Rodgers, and Dylan Thomas were among the first generation of BBC poets who wrote features.

(2) In The Middle of My Journey, Boyd writes, "I remember one BBC Controller proclaiming to his staff with all the dignity he could command, 'The fabric of the state must be preserved" (1990:205).

(3) Boyd writes, "Writers in the North, distanced politically and culturally from the South by the border, and isolated from England by the sea, felt denied, at least in part, their identity" (1990:102).

(4) Boyd was hired as a producer in the talks department in 1946, after being persuaded by Bell (also by this time a BBC employee) to apply for the position. Then a restless school teacher, Boyd did not have to be greatly persuaded: the salary of 400 [pounds sterling] a year was double what he earned teaching. He remained with the BBC for the next twenty-five years.

(5) Three of Boyd's regional programs were eventually repeated on the BBC's prestigious Third Programme.

(6) Interview with the author, Glasgow, 27 October 2000.

(7) Letter to the author, 24 January 2000.

(8) Muldoon worked as a BBC radio and television producer from 1974 to 1986.

(9) Data taken from the Hughes, Heaney, and MacNeice files, BBC Written Archives, Caversham, Reading, England.

(10) For a detailed discussion of poetic collaboration in Northern Ireland, see Clark 2002.

(11) For an excellent treatment of the ways in which Heaney, Mahon, Longley, and Muldoon have appropriated MacNeice's legacy, see Corcoran 1998.

(12) Data taken from BBC Written Archives, Caversham, Reading, England. Films 29, 22/23, 109, Radio Programme, Subject Index Literature--English--Poetry. The delineation between what appeared exclusively on Radio Northern Ireland and Radio 4 ends in 1966.

WORKS CITED

Bell, Sam Hanna, ed. 1951. The Arts in Ulster. London: George Harrap.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Cambridge: Polity.

Boyd, John. 1951. "Ulster Prose." The Arts in Ulster. Ed. Sam Hanna Bell. London: George Harrap. 99-127.

--. 1953. "The Ulster Novel." Rann 20:35-38.

--. 1990. The Middle of My Journey. Belfast: Blackstaff.

Briggs, Asa. 1996. History of Broadcasting. Vol. 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cathcart, Rex. 1984. The Most Contrary Region: The BBC in Northern Ireland 1924-1984. Belfast: Blackstaff.

Clark, Heather. 2002. "The Belfast Group: Direction and Division." Dissertation, University of Oxford.

Corcoran, Neil. 1998. "Keeping the Colours New: Louis MacNeice in the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland." Louis MacNeice and His Influence. Ed. Kathleen Devine and Alan J. Peacock. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. 114-32.

Deane, Seamus. 1977. "Unhappy and at Home." Interview with Seamus Heaney. Crane Bag 1:1.61-67.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. and trans. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon.

Greacen, Robert, ed. 1944. Northern Harvest: An Anthology of Ulster Writing. Belfast: Derrick MacCord.

Haffenden, John. 1979. "Meeting Seamus Heaney." London Magazine 19:3.5-28.

Heaney, Seamus. 1966. Death of a Naturalist. London: Faber and Faber.

--. 1968. "Old Derry's Walls." The Listener 24 October:521-22.

--. 1984. "Christmas, 1971." Preoccupations. London: Faber and Faber. 30-33.

--. 1995. The Redress of Poetry. London: Faber and Faber.

--. 1998. "Crediting Poetry." Opened Ground. London: Faber and Faber. 415-30.

Hewitt, John. 1944. "Painting in Ulster." Northern Harvest: An Anthology of Ulster Writing. Ed. Robert Greacen. Belfast: Derrick MacCord. 140-47.

--. 1951. "The Bitter Gourd: Some Problems of the Ulster Writer." The Arts in Ulster. Ed. Sam Hanna Bell. London: George Harrap. 108-21.

--. 1987. Ancestral Voices: The Selected Prose of John Hewitt. Ed. Tom Clyde. Belfast: Blackstaff.

Kavanagh, Patrick. 1952. "The Parish and the Universe." Kavanagh's Weekly 7 (24 May):2.

McFadden, Roy. 1948. "Editorial." Rann x:i.

O Faolain, Sean. 1942. "Editorial." The Bell 4:4.1-2.

Sergeant, Howard. 1953. "Ulster Regionalism." Rann 20:3-7.

Shearman, Hugh. 1944. "Ulster To-Day." Northern Harvest: An Anthology of Ulster Writing. Ed. Robert Greacen. Belfast: Derrick MacCord. 117-30.

HEATHER CLARK is assistant professor of English at Marlboro College in Vermont. She holds degrees from Harvard University, Trinity College Dublin, and Oxford University, where she recently completed a doctoral dissertation on the Belfast Group. Her main research interest is poetic collaboration in Northern Ireland; she is currently preparing her dissertation for publication. In 2002 she won the Nevill Coghill Poetry Prize at Oxford.

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