Francis Ledwidge Night/An Tobar!

Francis Ledwidge Night/An Tobar!

Francis Ledwidge

An event to mark the centenary of the death of war poet Francis Ledwidge was held in An Tobar Ardbraccan last night. Chaired by Danny Cusack, those in attendance read some of their personal favourites or talked of his writings or reasons for going to war. Other pieces that were read  included Patrick Kavanagh's poem "Epic"  and someone read their own poem on the Blackbird, if I remember correctly. I read A Trench Conversion.  Pieces by  Ledwidge included, Stories of The Boyneside,  his poems, Soliloquy, To One Who Comes Now and Then, The Shadow People, Behind The Closed Eye, The Herons, Avalon, A Soldier's Grave, June, Ascension Thursday 1917, Druidism, Had I a Golden Pound, My Mother, A Little Boy in the Morning, The Wife of Llew, Lullaby, The Blackbirds, and there might be one or two I missed and there are some there I'm not too familiar with. There was also a mention of the Welsh poet Hedd Wyn and Danny Cusack read, The Lament for Thomas McDonagh and In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge by Seamus Heaney. The night finished off with Sean Reilly singing Thomas Moore's, The Minstrel Boy.