When David Oliver left Queen’s University in 1961, he didn’t think that it would take another six decades before he returned. He left with a degree in English Language and Literature and a lifelong friendship with Nobel Prizewinning Poet Seamus Heaney, who shared a lecture hall and similar sense of humour with the young David.

David has returned to Queen’s for the first time since those pre-Troubles days, with razor sharp memories of Seamus and a number of letters between the two. He was there when the work of the world-famous poet was published for the very first time, except Seamus was a little reticent about putting his name to it. “

In my second year, I got on the committee that was tasked with producing a magazine for the English department called Gorgon, which was on sale across the University. This was designed to give an outlet to English students who liked writing prose and poetry.”

David recalls that the first time Seamus’ writing appeared was in the third edition of Gorgon in November 1959: “He had a poem published in that and was quite uncertain about himself as a writer so he signed it ‘Incertus’ – uncertain. His first pieces were under that name and it’s interesting that he started, if you like, his public career using a Latin word and, as has been published, his dying words to Marie his wife, were 'Noli timere' – 'don't fear.’ So that seems quite an apt set of brackets to me, the beginning and ending.”

It wasn’t until a further edition of the now successful magazine that Seamus put his name to his work: “I was on the committee and the sales were good at the time, so we had a more adventurous, attractive cover. I had the job of editing it in February 1960, and I solicited a contribution from Seamus. He wrote a neat little poem called Aran and that was the first time he put his name on a poem to be published.”

David remembers Seamus as “a quiet country boy, initially, but also a very popular, very social lad” with a great sense of humour. He recalls a day when they arrived early to an empty lecture theatre and Seamus “stood at the front at the lectern and he declaimed Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill to great effect, which was an example of his formidable memory. He was wonderful reading his own work, but he had a rich voice which wrapped itself eloquently around Dylan Thomas’ word magic. And he had forgotten about that when I mentioned it in a letter I wrote to him years later.”

He recalls enjoyable days around campus, riotous debates where the likes of Brendan Behan placed a crate of Guiness under his chair before he started speaking, and how their parents enjoyed sandwiches on the Quad on their Graduation Day, the first time either set had experienced anything like it. He adds: “We weren’t aware in those days that in a few years, he would publish a book of such important poetry – it was just Seamus the lad when I knew him.”

After University, they both went their separate ways to teacher training colleges yet their friendship endured, buoyed up by intermittent letter writing between the two over the years which now chart the growth in Heaney’s success and confidence.

When Seamus had his first book of poetry, Death of a Naturalist, published by Faber and Faber in 1966, he wrote to David expressing how taken aback he was “by the great reception he got nationally for his work. He typed a few poems which hadn’t got into that collection which were then printed in the subsequent collection, but he wasn’t to know that then.”

Talking about the letters, David says: “I have a couple of letters which are quite personal where he opens up about his world, this is post Death of a Naturalist, in which he refers to how he was criticised for being a country boy because most of the poems are country based.

“When he was younger, his handwriting was quite carefully written with a sense of control and uncertainty in the ideas he expressed. But compared to ones he sent me in 1997, the handwriting is bold and confident and you can see here’s a man who is a success in his world and completely sure of himself and his ideas. The fact that it is reflected in his actual handwriting is quite remarkable.”

They only physically met one more time, very briefly when David was Headteacher in a comprehensive in Teesside and took a minibus of 6^th Form A Level English students to Newcastle where Seamus was giving a reading. They only had time for a quick chat as he had to get the students back, so they arranged to catch up in York the following weekend and go out for a drink. But it snowed heavily that weekend and sadly the catch up never happened.

David and his wife Jenny will travel back to Belfast this week for the opening of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.