The
100th anniversary of the death of the poet-soldier Francis Ledwidge,
in World War 1, occurs on 31st
July this year. It should draw more attention to the life and work of
this fascinating writer. The family cottage is now a museum, well
worth a visit, just east of Slane, on the N51.
http://www.francisledwidge.com
My
own interest in the life and work of Francis Ledwidge rests on a
dramatic question: how does a person hold soldiering, which is
death-affirming, and poetry, which is life-affirming, even when
tragic, in one life? I made a short film with RTÉ on that question
last year,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV06xjAiETM
The
complexities behind the question previously drew out of me a radio
talk for RTÉ's Sunday
Miscellany,
an unproduced screenplay, a radio play for RTÉ, a museum talk and a
stage play, Still,
the Blackbird Sings, which
The Playhouse toured nationally in 2010 and Creggan Enterprises
toured to non-theatre venues, as a script-in-hand production, in
the Derry-Strabane area in 2016.
The story of
Francis Ledwidge's time in Ebrington Barracks, Derry, as a member of
the British Army's Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1916, intrigues
me. Much speculation occurs on why Ledwidge enlisted in the first
place. The patronage of a local Anglo-Irish aristocrat and the
furious grief of the young broken-hearted, among other causes, are
cited. See Alice Curtayne's biography and Dermot Bolger's selection
of the poetry, which New Island will bring out in March.
What intrigues me
further is why did he, and so many others, stay in, when they'd
witnessed and committed horrors in campaigns in Gallipoli and in
France. In my play, Ledwidge, the lance-corporal, heads a squad of
five young soldiers, not long returned to barracks. Ledwidge, the
poet-soldier, leads his squad, drilling and boozing and carousing, as
he writes love poems and nature verses and wonders if he's made the
right choices, while they wait for the call to war again.
His best known
poem is dedicated to Thomas Mac Donagh, also a poet-soldier. Ledwidge
laments that Mac Donagh will not hear the bittern cry. There is
something of the bittern, a rare bird, about Francis Ledwidge
himself.
My
radio talk about him followed a visit I made to his grave in
Belgium, in 1997:
'Grave
number 5, Row B, second plot. There is a corner of a foreign field
that is forever Ireland. I stood amidst the gravestones, pleased
somehow that Ledwidge should be lying among the green fields outside
a small village. No Boyne water rushed by, but a small river passed
under a bridge. I thought about the poet and the lines from his own
poem,
A Soldier’s Grave
And
where the earth was soft for flowers we made
A
grave for him that he might better rest.
So,
Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed,
And
there the lark shall turn her dewy nest.'
This piece appears in the March 2017 edition of Final Draft, the members' newsletter of the Irish Writers' Union.
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
No comments:
Post a Comment