The Yellow Nib

The Yellow Nib is the new literary journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, established in February 2003, at Queen’s University Belfast. The journal takes the inspiration for its title from the Early Irish poem known, in English, as ‘The Blackbird of Belfast Lough’, which is thought to have been written in the margin of a manuscript by a scribe in the eighth or ninth century. An image of the blackbird, from a wood engraving by Jeffrey Morgan, is now the emblem of the Seamus Heaney Centre, and consequently of The Yellow Nib itself. The Yellow Nib is not an academic journal, but includes writing about writing. The journal’s aim is simple: to publish good writing, whether it be poetry, fiction, essay or meditation, from established and emerging writers. It will host a conversation between genres and generations. This third issue of the journal will contain poems and essays from established writers and critics such as Frank Ormsby, Ian Sansom, Leontia Flynn, Martin Mooney and Sinead Morrissey and Glenn Patterson.