Seamus Heaney Home

U.S. Consul General Visits HomePlace

Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau, U.S. Consul General in Belfast, visited Seamus Heaney HomePlace Bellaghy on Friday 10th January 2020.  Ms. Trudeau was welcomed to HomePlace by Chair of Mid Ulster District Council, Councillor Martin Kearney, before experiencing the award winning Man and Boy Exhibition.

Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau assumed her duties as U.S. Consul General in Belfast in September 2018. The U.S. Consulate General was established on May 27, 1796 by the first American President George Washington, and is the second oldest continuously operating U.S. Consulate in the world.
Councillor Martin Kearney said “We were delighted to welcome Ms Trudeau to Mid Ulster today and continue the already strong connection between this area, Seamus Heaney and the United States.”

Seamus Heaney’s work is renowned throughout the world but he is particularly recognised and respected in America as he spent many years teaching in some of the most prestigious universities in the country including a year teaching at the University of California at Berkeley (1970-71), a year at Harvard University (1979) before becoming a permanent member of staff there in 1984, when he was made Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. It was a post he held until 1996 – going to Cambridge, Massachusetts to teach the spring semester every year – after which he became Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence.