The 'Spirit of Belfast'

 

It’s the 15^th June 2020 and it’s a Sunday afternoon and I am walking through the Cornmarket area and I notice there are quite a lot of people sitting round the ‘Spirit of Belfast’ sculpture, chatting, laughing and a girl and her partner were having a soft drink. She had a rucksack and she was wearing a baseball cap. She was drinking a strawberry shake from a plastic container.  They were cyclists and their bikes were at their feet. There was a group of three older men sitting chatting about the past.

A group of four girls were chatting. Two were sitting at the base of the sculpture and two were standing. Two were wearing summer dresses and one was wearing shorts and the other was wearing trousers. They were all wearing fashionable sandals. 

The sculpture was designed by Dan George whose aim in designing the piece was to suggest a narrative that hinted at the city’s industrial past of ship-building and the linen industry and to point to the future of peace and progress. The sculpture is made up of intertwined steel arcs which during the day the steel evokes the skill and engineering prowess of the ship building industry. Harland and Woolf shipyard is famous for the two yellow gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath which still grace the sky. At night the sculpture is illuminated and the arcs are supposed to suggest the linen industry and create an illusion of linen ribbons being blown upwardso. Dan George said “The ‘Spirit of Belfast’ ‘is the manifestation of our energy as we look to the future as well as a meditation on our past. It is a timepiece that weaves together the strength of steel and the delicacy of light, ocean liners and linen, progress and peace.’

Thomas Carnduff was known as ‘The Shipyard Poet’

Men of Belfast

O city of sound and motion!

O city of endless stir!

From the dawn of a misty morning

To the fall of the evening air.

From the night of moving shadows

To the sound of shipyard horn.

We hail thee Queen of the Northland

We who are Belfast born.

Hark to the ring of the anvil!

Hark to the song of the loom!

And the siren-call of the steamers

Passing the harbour boom.

  

The cars will come back

The cruise ships will come back

The cranes will appear back on the horizon

The children will go back to school

The clothes shops will open

The churches will open

The cathedrals will open

The campuses will open

The cinemas will open

The clubs will open

The coffee shops will open

Castle Court will open

City sightseeing Belfast hop-on hop off Bus tours will re-open.

Crumlin Road Gaol Visitor Centre will re-open.

There will be no more free parking in City Centre

There will be no more queues outside Tesco’s

There will be no more sanitisers or gloves or masks