Queen's University Belfast forms the basis for a new poetry anthology edited by Enniskillen born poet and anthologist Frank Ormsby, which is due to be launched later this week.

'The Blackbird's Nest' celebrates the tradition of poetic excellence at Queen's, and brings together the work of some of Northern Ireland's most renowned writers down to the lesser known verse of a security guard who worked in the University.

All the poems in the anthology are from writer's who either attended Queen's as students or teachers. The most instantly recognisable of these is the Derry born poet Seamus Heaney. His links with the University include attending as a undergraduate, as an English lecturer, and as the recipient of an Honorary Degree. In his honour the University opened the Seamus Heaney Library in 1997, and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in 2003.

Ormsby, who was born in Enniskillen, and educated at St Michael's College, began his association with the University when he attended as a student. However, even on graduating he never strayed far from the shadow of Queen's either mentally or physically, taking up a post in the English Department at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution where he has taught since 1975.

Ormsby writes an eloquent introduction to the selection of poems, detailing the University's position in influencing poetry in Northern Ireland. He explains: "In its first fifty years the University produced no poets of any note."

He goes on to reveal it wasn't until the 1940's that Queen's began to provide a platform for emerging undergraduate poets such as Roy McFadden and Robert Greacen, as well as older figures such as Hewitt and Rodgers and prose writers such as Michael McLaverty, John Boyd (both graduate's of Queen's) and Sam Hanna Bell.

However, Ormsby notes it was the 1960's which proved the pivotal decade: "In 1962 Philip Hobsbaum joined the English Department and began a search for local creative talent around which he might build a writers' group similar to one he had previously co-founded in London."

The 'Belfast Group' as it came to be known had its' first meeting in Hobsbaum's flat in Fitzwilliam Street in the autumn of 1963, and continued to meet their weekly during term time until 1966.

It included a wealth of talent such as Heaney, Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty - who was working as a laboratory technician in Queen's Anatomy Department, Edna Longley, Marie Heaney, and Michael Longley.

When Hobsbaum left Belfast in 1966, the Group continued to meet, first in the English Department, and then in the Heaneys' house in Ashley Avenue, and occasionally in the Four-In-Hand pub (now Ryan's) on the Lisburn Road. By the end of the decade its membership included some leading figures from the next generation of Queen's poets, such as Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson.

Although the Belfast Group filtered away over the years the effect it has had on future generations of writers and poets at the University cannot be underestimated.

Ormsby explains the purpose of the anthology: 'Is to reflect the richness and diversity of poetry at Queen's University Belfast since the early twentieth century and in particular the remarkable flowering that has its origins in the 1960's and has continued through every decade since."

'A Blackbird's Nest' is published by Blackstaff Press and will be officially launched at the Whitla Hall in Queen's University on Saturday 4 November. This unique collection provides a look at Northern Ireland life, its troubles and success, through the eyes of those who lived and studied in Belfast over the last 60 years.

While inevitably some look to the political situation here for inspiration, others look elsewhere, to the people and the countryside - and that is reflected in the rich diversity of poems included.