The Wood Road

The poem provides a series of visual dramas that occurred along the road outside Heaney’s second family home at the Wood which runs northwards from Bellaghy towards Portglenone via Mullhollandtown. Heaney uses Wood Road in his poems possibly because the actual name on the map (Ballymacombs Road) is too much of a mouthful! The Wood Road (as it is and was) has been maintained but not upgraded (resurfaced, never widened). This is how it will present when at the end of the poem all its dramas have been played out. Scene 1: a night scene from the 1950’s period prior to the so-called ‘Troubles’; a caricature  B Special volunteer in training (Bill Pickering … with his gun ) on surveillance […]