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Life and background
John Hewitt was born of devout Methodist stock in Belfast on October 28, 1907. His father, Robert Hewitt, had resigned from the Orange Order after it lifted a ban on the consumption of liquor. His grandfather had boasted that no Hewitt had ever married a Papist, or kept a public house. He himself was educated at the Agnes Street Methodist Primary School where his father was principal, and went on to Queens University Belfast where he graduated with a BA.
From 1930 he was employed at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery until he moved to the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry. He returned to Belfast on his retirement in 1972 and began to write vigorously. He died in 1987, having produced 14 volumes of poetry and numerous other writings on art and literary criticism.
Hewitt's poetry is the singular product of a singular mind. In contrast with much of his personal background, his poetry reflects a liberal attitude, advocating an acceptance of both planter and native traditions in the "region" of Ulster. Though Protestant, his poetry treats both Irish history and Catholicism with sympathy and expresses hope for the future.
Commentary
The Green Shoot is a meditation on the history of Hewitt's childhood. It evolves in a backward motion. Two memories are juxtaposed, the first being one of aggression and anger against Catholics, represented by the priest and the errand-boy; the second being the warmer memory of a touching childhood Christmas scene. The contrast could not be sharper and it serves to highlight very effectively, the divisions in Northern Irish society.
The poet is very quick to establish an informed stance: the first three words, "this harsh city," contain within themselves the seed of what is to follow. The city is harsh and it is unforgiving; it teaches its inhabitants to view each other with mistrust and fear. Note how this culturally ingrained behaviour is passed on to Hewitt from his peers: "schooled in such duties by my bolder friends".
However, Hewitt acknowledges the complexity of the Northern situation by showing the warmth that existed in his household at Christmas "not so many years hurried years before". A warmth generated, paradoxically, by Catholic carol singers. The tears in his mother's eyes can be seen as a silent lament for times when such divisions did not exist in society and as a forewarning of the eventual bitterness which will undoubtedly effect her son. The poet admits that it is out of this complex "mulch" that his "green shoot" has grown. It is the sign of a tender hope for the future based on an unsentimental view of the past.
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