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From Mountain to Lough
by Matt Duggan
Format: Hardback
Publication date: 17th August, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-906018-73-3
Price: €15
In his poetry, Matt Duggan draws his strength from his home place, the mountains and the loughs. He celebrates the people who lived and survived in that beautiful but harsh terrain, the people who ‘lived, unhonoured and unsung, on many a mountain face.’
The poetry of Derrylin post man Matt Duggan (1914-1979) appeared in various journals and newspapers during his lifetime and a small section was published in Belfast in a booklet called From Mountain to Lough.
Although it is almost 30 years since his death, some of Matt Duggan’s best poems have remained in circulation and are still appreciated and enjoyed in south Fermanagh where he too is fondly remembered. His notebooks and published works have been carefully preserved by his family and now his son Gerry has gathered all the poems together for publication in this present volume. As well as his poetry, Matt Duggan has also left a substantial number of short stories and it is hoped that these will be republished at some future date.
Matt Duggan was educated both by school and by life. He lived through turbulent times. He survived the horrors of the Second World War and the trials of serious illness. He knew the pain of exile, homesickness and hardship but also the joy of returning to his own place and people. In his last years the deep shadow of the Troubles fell across the land that he loved. In his poetry he struggles to understand the dark deeds and the politicians, and he finds solace in humanity and in taking the long view of history in which he finds that the people had lived through hardship before, and survived. But little did he know how long this trouble would last.
In his poetry he draws his strength from his home place, the mountains and the loughs. He celebrates the people who lived and survived in that beautiful but harsh terrain, the people who ‘lived, unhonoured and unsung, on many a mountain face.’
His delight in nature is reminiscent of the work of Francis Ledwidge, the Co. Meath poet who died in World War One. Like Ledwidge, Matt Duggan chose not to write about the horror of war and must have survived on fond memories of home just as later in London he assuages his loneliness by thinking of the ‘Lights of Lisnaskay.’ Unlike Ledwidge, however, Matt Duggan retains his natural voice, his language is never artificial, his diction is always true. His lines have rhythm and cadence that at times are as natural as a ballad; his poems are the songs of a place in the language of the people, not stilted and precious as regrettably Ledwidge sometimes can be. Matt Duggan wears his learning lightly, but still can be profound.
Matt Duggan lived to witness the modern world and its effects, not only in London but also in rural Fermanagh. He saw change and saw more coming. Some of his verses can now be seen to be quite prophetic but not even he could have imagined the scale of the change in his own beloved Derrylin where the night sky is now lit up by factory lights and a half a mountain has been quarried away. The words of a poet could easily go unheard amidst such tumult.
Much credit therefore must go to his family for preserving his work, appreciating its value and making it available again. His is a clear calm and pleasant voice. It is my hope that it will be heard by new generations and by a wider audience who cannot have been aware of his work before now.
The Welcome
You are welcome, dear friend, as the light in the morning;
As the green on the hillside when winter is past,
As the bloom of the snowdrops, the bleak earth adorning;
As home to the weary, who can rest there at last.
The mountains shall loom on the skyline to meet you;
The glens and their rivers shall bid you to stay;
The haze from the boglands envelop and greet you;
And the song of the birds shall be with you all day.
