Colin Middleton tributes in poetry

Seamus Heaney

Michael Longley

Longley in his poem “White Farmhouse” describes the painting “County Down Farmhouse” which today hangs in Colin’s daughter Jane’s home in Terrassa, Spain. Jane explains how her father used all the colours in his palette in this his final painting.

White Farmhouse after Colin Middleton

Colin Middleton knew that he was dying And fitted all the colours he had ever used Into his last painting, a white farmhouse

Among drumlins, the gable and chimneys

White, the corn harvested by his palette-knife, A besmirching of corn poppy, cornflower, One blue-black spinney, triangles of sunlight

Disappearing between Octobery hedges, Another farmhouse in the distance like home. Colin Middleton was a friend of mine

When I was young. How can I count the colours?

There are no doors or windows in the building, No outhouses. I name the picture for myself. Titles, said Duchamp, are invisible colours.

Heaney dedicated two poems to his friend, “Loughanure” and “In Small Townlands”. Loughanure is a small village near Glenties in Co. Donegal. Heaney bought the painting soon after he was married and it hangs today in the family home. His wife Marie tells the story that they had earmarked the thirty pounds for a fridge and Seamus returned home with Colin’s painting instead!

In the first verse of the poem (below) Heaney describes how Colin when meeting you would narrow his eyes and size you up as if you were a canvas.

He describes the composition of the painting and mentions that when Colin visited he would gaze at his work “grunting a bit and nodding”. Reproductions of both paintings, Loughanure and White Farmhouse are displayed adjacent to this board.

Loughanure

Smoke might have been already in his eyes

The way he’d narrow them to size you up As if you were a canvas, all the while

Licking and sealing a hand-rolled cigarette, Each small ash increment flicked off As white as flecks on the horizon line

Of his painting of Loughanure, thirty guineas

Forty odd years ago. Whitewashed gables

Like petals stripped from hawthorn, heather ground

A pother of Gaeltacht turf smoke. Every time He came to the house, he would go and stand Gazing at it, grunting a bit and nodding.