While the article is wrong about Heaney’s birthplace – he was born in Derry – the paper nonetheless seems to be the source of the now famous quote. He was referring to the situation in the North, and said that he had taken the title of the book from the old farming custom of wintering cattle out in pasture. This was the comment of Bangor born Seamus Heaney whose book of poems, “Wintering Out”, was launched at a publication party in the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, last night. “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere”. Soon, it had become a common sight not just on social media but in the real world, appearing on walls and banners across the country. It got hundreds of re-tweets and quickly took off, being referenced by people in relation to the ongoing Covid-19 situation.Ī tweet by the painter Colin Davidson referencing the quote received thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets. Little notice was taken of the line until it was tweeted out again by the exhibition on 16 March. The quote was simply captioned: “Interview with SH, 1972.” “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere” It’s not from a poem, as you might expect, nor even from any essay or article Heaney wrote.īack in January 2019, the Twitter account of the Listen Now Again exhibition tweeted out the line for the first time. The reason that the line has become so popular is obvious, offering a beautiful image of hopefulness during a dark time.īut despite the ubiquity of the quote in recent weeks – it was even quoted by Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late Show – the source remained something of a mystery.

“If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere,” the poet, who died in 2013, was supposed to have said. One line from the Nobel-Prize-winning Irish poet has become a semi-permanent refrain on radio, TV and Twitter during the course of the pandemic. READING SEAMUS HEANEY during the Covid-19 crisis? You’re probably not alone.

This one summer