Young poet 'honoured' to feature on Seamus Heaney mural

A 12-year-old poet says it is an honour to have his work featured on new street art honouring Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.

The Seamus Heaney mural was unveiled on Westland Street in Londonderry earlier this week.

As well as a portrait of the Nobel Laureate, the artwork – created by Derry street art collective Peaball and community arts group Féile – features the poem 'Beneath Irish skies' written by 12-year-old Jude Shiels.

"I'm really honoured and happy for my poem to be part of this mural," Jude said, adding it was "an amazing experience".

"I'm very proud."

Working on the project, he said gave him a chance to show his "creative side", and "to meet different people from difference backgrounds and meet new friends."

The unveiling of the artwork marks the end of a year long project involving young people from Bishop Street Youth Club and Newbuildings Youth Club.

Their collaboration saw them help develop the mural's design - erected close to where Heaney went to school in Derry – in a project funded by the EU's Peaceplus initiative.

Ruairi O'Connell from Féile said that as well as honouring Heaney, it is hoped the mural will spark debate over the role of modern day influencers.

"The young people were able to learn more about that connection and the influence his work has had on generations," he said.

O'Connell added: "The word influencer also gave them a chance to look at the people they see online today and compare that with someone whose words have continued to influence people decades after they were written."

He said the young people involved had "brought a huge amount of creativity and energy to the project from the very beginning."

The Heaney mural is latest addition to a burgeoning number of public artworks to those from or with close links to the city.

The Undertones, TV's Derry Girls, Amelia Earhart, and the city's factory workers all have been honoured with street art in recent times.

Internationally recognised as the greatest Irish poet since WB Yeats, Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest of nine children, on a farm near Toomebridge, but as a child moved to the village of Bellaghy.

He was educated at St Columb's College, Derry, and later at Queen's University Belfast, before training as a teacher.

His first book, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, reflected his rural upbringing, but his career coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals of the 20th century, the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Further works would include Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975), right through to Station Island (1984), Seeing Things (1991), District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010).

He was also the professor of poetry at Oxford University between 1989 and 1994.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

He died in 2013 at the age of 74.