BLOGPOST SPECIAL:
TALK
AT THE LAUNCH OF A GRAPHIC NOVEL ON THE LIFE OF FRANCIS LEDWIDGE;
TOWER MUSEUM, 21st APRIL 2016
©
Dave Duggan April 2016
The
Decade of Centenaries is a box of curiosities we look into with awe,
and a little nervousness. Lift the lid and see: people, events,
cross-actions, armies, a new franchise for women, political promises,
an arms race, extreme wealth, extreme poverty, aristocratic families
across Europe, all inter-related and inter-married, falling out with
each other, swathes of the south of the globe divided among countries
and corporations in the north of the globe, imperialisms, repressions
and rebellions. We're nervous - I suggest - both locally and
globally, because the decade of centenaries is not in the past. It is
now. And so we get creative, as with this new graphic novel by Marty
Melarkey, Danny McLaughlin, David Campbell and Revolve Comics.
Of
course, that will be challenged as an ahistorical, even an
anti-historical view. And - shock horror - in a museum. Then, I work
as a dramatist, not as a historian and I suggest that, while facts
are to be fought over, fictions are to be enjoyed. As Alfred
Hitchcock said, drama is life with the boring bits left out.
So,
I go into the box, relishing the complexity of it all. Instead of
one or two grand narratives, I see a mesh of multiple stories and
anecdotes, half-hidden occurrences, most of them unearthed by
assiduous historians, as we will hear, from Dr. Catherine Morris, in
the case of Alice Milligan. And there I find, Francis Ledwidge. One
hundred years ago, he was on the Eastern Front, fighting with the
British Army against Turkish and Bulgarian troops, mainly young
peasants like himself. Ironies of slaughter litter the box of
curiosities.
It's
the complexity of Ledwidge's character that leads me to write Still,
The Blackbird Sings, a play on the life and times of the poet
soldier in Ebrington Barracks. He returned to Ireland, to Dublin, a
city devastated by the violent events of the Easter Rising. He is
devastated himself by the death of his fellow poet and friend Thomas
McDonagh, one of the executed signatories of the Proclamation. From
this devastation he creates his best-known poem, Lament for Tomas
McDonagh, featured in the graphic novel.
He
shall not hear the bittern cry
In
the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor
voices of the sweeter birds
Above
the wailing of the rain.
Perhaps
Francis Ledwidge was more lyric rhymer than soldier, more
farmer/nationalist/labour activist/road mender/day-labourer than
warrior, though he possibly killed people in hand-to-hand combat.
How
does a person hold these two drives together?
The
drive to killing, in soldiery. The drive to living, in poetry.
These
are the questions that take me rummaging in the box of curiosities
and find me responding artistically.
All
artistic work benefits from the work of the historians. Now, one
hundred years after his time in Ebrington, this graphic telling of
Ledwidge's story is launched, composed and drawn by artists who are
seeking to face chaos and horror with beauty and order, by forging
fact and fiction, in the fires of imagining.
Imagine
a young man, a poet, who has dodged death on bullet-riddled beaches
in Turkey. Who has possibly killed in action. Who has been injured
and recovered in a military hospital in Cairo. Who returns to Dublin
to find a friend and fellow poet executed by soldiers in the same
uniform as the one he wears. Who is posted to Derry in May 1916 and
stripped of his rank, because of tardiness and insubordination. Who
sees reflections of his beloved Boyne river in the glorious Foyle.
Who learns of thousands of fellow soldiers slaughtered in battles
beside the river Somme, in France in July1916.
Who
lives with men petrified that they too will be sent to the human
abattoirs of France, knowing that the odds on them dying are
shortening.
How
do you live like that?
And
yet he did. Lived like that. Died like that.
His
poetry remains.
And
when the first surprise of flight
Sweet
songs excite, from the far dawn
Shall
there come blackbirds loud with love,
Sweet
echoes of the singers gone.
But
in the lonely hush of eve
Weeping
I grieve the silent bills."
I
heard the Poor Old Woman say
In
Derry of the little hills.
There
is a new pub, round the corner on Foyle street, called
Blackbird. Francis Ledwidge would have enjoyed a pint there.
Today,
historians and artists open the box of curiosities and peer inside,
discovering facts and creating fictions, often forging them together.
Delicate work. With this graphic novel, we have a marvellous instance
of the work of artists, aiming to introduce young people to the life
of the poet-soldier Francis Ledwidge. I commend it to you.
Please
allow me to conclude with an extract from my play, Still, the
Blackbird Sings, which I hope Creggan Enterprises may take on a
tour of non-theatre venues, as a script-in-hand performance, in
September.
Francis
Ledwidge stands on the edge of the square in Ebrington, above the
Foyle. He is with his squad. He is relishing his poetic voice and
foreseeing his death in a bomb blast, as he looks over the river.
A
sparkling river. And a bridge, bedecked on every side with roses.
Smell them lads! Pink ones. Ruby red ones. Yellow ones, the flaxen
yellow that sweeps from a girl’s hair and gladdens a man’s eye.
White ones. White roses. Innocent as peace. We’re at the
crossroads. The five of us. Mugs of tea in our hands. Just like now
lads.
We’re
laughing and telling stories and I have new poems about blackbirds
and robins and the way the water runs silver in the river. Oh! The
river! Oh, my darling Boyne river, by the high reed banks where we
hear.....The bittern cry! Stand to lads!
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