Seamus Heaney returns to his native Co Derry today to help raise funds for the primary school he attended at Anahorish.
"It was my first school and it leaves the first mark on the mind," he told The Irish Times.
"I've not been there for 50 years but it and the teachers there figure in my memory and in my poems."
The school that Heaney left in 1951 now has some 180 pupils and needs funds for redevelopment. Many children are still educated in five mobile classrooms that were once installed on a "temporary" basis.
The school will put up for auction three manuscripts of Heaney poems, all of which relate closely to his home turf and the "country of the mind".
Anahorish, Station Island part V and Relic of Memory have
been transcribed by the poet on to parchment and signed, specifically for the auction, which will take place at the Tullyglass Hotel, outside Ballymena, tonight.
"Any person's first school figures as eternal in the memory," he said.
"It's almost mythical. It's like it marks your first betrayal into reality."
Anahorish, a short distance outside Toome, Co Derry, was like many country schools, he explained.
"The teachers knew your parents. I remember Miss Wall, the infants' teacher, and the Master - he was more awesome. I remember being brought in for Irish and Latin lessons and for algebra. But I was more afraid of him, so I let on I understood the algebra."
Despite its Catholic ethos the school was cross-community, he said, recalling the family names of many local families who sent children there.
"I remember the Evanses, the Booths, the Ellises, the Dicksons as well as the Tolands and the Ewarts.
"It was a community school in its own way."
Dr Heaney will arrive at the school at lunchtime today, where pupils will prepare an assembly in his honour.
This will include a poetry reading of one of the works for auction by one of the schoolchildren.
Some 800 staff, past pupils, parents as well as supporters of the school, under the banner of Friends of Anahorish, will later hold a reunion gala dinner at Tullyglass, where the auction will be held.
The works will be sold in three lots and telephone inquiries are welcome, school principal Danny Quinn said yesterday.
The school is reluctant to estimate the value of the three manuscripts, but it is thought they could each realise a four-figure sum.
Inquiries can be made directly to Anahorish school. The number from the Republic is 048-7965 0825.