9 February 2017: Glasnevin Trust/TCD winter lecture: ‘Poets of the black chair: Francis Ledwidge and Hedd Wynn, 1887-1917’, Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, Dublin 11

On Thursday 9 February 2017 Glasnevin Trust and Trinity College Dublin presented the third in a series of lectures on ‘Ireland and the world after the Rising’. Myles Duncan (RTÉ) and Nerys Williams (UCD) presented a joint lecture entitled ‘Poets of the black chair: Francis Ledwidge and Hedd Wynn, 1887-1917’. Francis Ledwidge is one of the most famous Irish casualties of the Great War, largely because of his reputation as a pastoral poet. He is often seen as Ireland’s most famous ‘war poet’. Yet he was not alone in this; and his life, work and experience is mirrored by one of his contemporaries. Buried a few metres from Ledwidge is another fallen soldier: Estyn Evans who wrote poetry in Welsh under the name Hedd Wynn and is celebrated in Wales. They died on the same day within a short distance of each other and are buried together. Both were rural poets, both died on the same day in 1917 and both are buried within yards of one another. This lecture will explore the similarities between their lives, works and deaths.

The lecture took place at 7pm in Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, Finglas Road, Dublin 11.  Follow this link for information on the lecture series.