Francis Ledwidge: A Life of the Poet [Mīkstie vāki]

This selection of Francis Ledwidge’s poems, edited by Dermot Bolger, celebrates a remarkably gifted poet who, one hundred years after his tragic death in Ypres, is perhaps best known for the poetic brilliance of much of his work as well as the circumstances of his death.

Although he died at twenty-nine, having lived to see only one volume of his poems in print, today, 100 years after his death, the life of the Irish poet Francis Ledwidge continues to fascinate successive generations of readers.Born in Slane, County Meath, in 1887, Ledwidge endured a childhood of ferocious hardship before leaving school at fourteen to work as a farm labourer, copper miner, road worker and union organiser. Throughout this time he produced an extraordinary body of exquisite lyric poetry.He burst onto the literary scene just before the First World War, in which, although a devoted and active Irish Nationalist, he was killed in Flanders in the uniform of the British Army. Widely viewed as a dichotomy, this led to decades of suspicion and neglect in some quarters before Alice Curtayne published her acclaimed biography of the poet in 1972, rightly restoring his reputation.Detailing the remarkable life, loves and tragic death of an exceptionally gifted Irish poet, this classic biography also offers a memorable insight into the life and politics of Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century.

Born in poverty in Slane, County Meath, Ledwidge worked as a farm hand, copper miner and road labourer. In his twenties he would become a rising star in the Irish literary scene, although he lived only to see one collection of his verse in print, receiving his author’s copy while freezing and on starvation rations in Serbia. Although a staunch Irish Nationalist, he chose to fight in the First World War, where he died just short of his thirtieth birthday – in the inhuman nightmare that was the Third Battle of Ypres. This selection of Francis Ledwidge’s poems, edited by Dermot Bolger, celebrates a remarkably gifted poet who, one hundred years after his tragic death in Ypres, is perhaps best known for the poetic brilliance of much of his work as well as the circumstances of his death. Introduced by Seamus Heaney and with an extended afterword by Dermot Bolger, this volume captures the depth and lyric grace of Ledwidge’s finest poems and conjures a moving portrait of an eventful life cut tragically short.