Ewart Milne
Encyclopedia
Ewart Milne was an Irish
poet
who described himself on various book jackets as "a sailor before the mast, ambulance driver and courier during the Spanish Civil War, a land worker and estate manager in England during and after World War 2" and also "an enthusiast for lost causes - national, political, social and merely human".
The background to the Spanish Civil War
contributed to his political awakening and he came to England to work as a voluntary administrator for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in London, for whom he often acted as a medical courier. Milne has also described how he was once unwillingly involved in some arms deal.
Arthur Peacock, a British volunteer in the International Brigades
wrote:
After SMA was wound up, Milne returned to Ireland but remained politically active in support of the campaign for the release of Frank Ryan
, the leader of the Connolly Column
of Irish volunteers on the Republican side, who had been captured and imprisoned in Spain. At one point Milne took part in a delegation to Westminster
seeking Labour Party
support for this. In August 1938 he was reported in The Worker's Republic as being one of the 12 member committee of the James Connolly
Irish club in London.
During his time in England and Spain, Milne got to know the left-leaning poets who supported the Republican cause, including W.H.Auden, Stephen Spender
and Cecil Day Lewis. In 1938 his first collection of poems, Forty North Fifty West, was published in Dublin, followed by two others in 1940 and 1941. Having taken a pro-British line in neutral Ireland, he was informed by Karl Petersen, the German press attache in Dublin, that he was on the Nazi death list. This decided him to help in the British war effort and he returned to England with the help of John Betjeman
(then working at the British embassy in Ireland).
Between 1942-62 he was resident in England and an active presence on the English literary scene. In particular he became associated with the poets grouped around the magazine Nine, edited by Peter Russell
and Ian Fletcher. He and his wife Thelma also backed the young Irish poet Patrick Galvin
when he launched his own magazine, Chanticleer. This generous encouragement of younger writers was later extended to several others, including John F. Deane
, Gerald Dawe
and Maurice Scully
.
Milne regarded his return to Dublin in 1962 as a disaster, overshadowed as his four-year stay was by quarrels with the establishment, the discovery of betrayal by a friend and the death of his wife from lung cancer. The misery of those events is recorded in Time Stopped (1967); the artistic frustration of the time also resulted in the poems included in Cantata Under Orion (1976). Returning to England in 1966, he settled in Bedford, where he died of a heart attack early in 1987. Politically he remained involved and spoke alongside Auberon Waugh
at the rally on behalf of Biafra in 1968, but his views moved further to the right in later years. He wrote to the Irish Times on April 13, 1976, saying that he'd been "taken in by Stalin and that Leninism
is Satanism"; he also sided with the Loyalist position in the Ulster conflict.
Milne was twice married. First to Kathleen Ida Bradner in 1927, by whom he had two sons; then in 1948 to Thelma Dobson, by whom he had two more sons.
school which had dominated his youth’, as The Times obituary put it, much as Yeats’ later poetry sought to undo the twilit fashion set by his own earlier verse. In addition, Milne frequently entered into a poetic dialogue with his contemporaries, but besides Yeats these included Ezra Pound
, Dylan Thomas
and Sylvia Plath
, among many others. In reality, the Irish sources that inspired Milne were quite other than Yeats.
Both in his conversation and in his poetry, Milne used to complain of being passed over because of his dual heritage: ‘The English see I am not English...To the Irish I am Anglo’. He resisted categorisation, and his changes of residence back and forth across the Irish Sea only added to the problem. From the 1970s onwards, the part he had played during the Spanish Civil War brought his name back into notice and continues to do so: see for example Anna Kathryn Kendrick’s thesis, On Guard with the Junipers: Ewart Milne and Irish Literary Dissent in the Spanish Civil War. The poems he wrote on the subject were largely confined to a section in his second book, Letter from Ireland (1940). These were supplemented by the autobiographically-based stories he wrote at the time, only three of which were published in the 1930s; they and the remaining four, plus a later account of his involvement in a gun-running deal, appeared only in 1985 (Drums Without End, Isle of Skye).
Milne’s poetry was very varied and included the slight, the serious and the sexy. At its best it employed a fluent long-lined narrative, a rhythmically driven rhetoric. There are good examples of this, and of several jeux d’esprit, in his two volumes of selected poems: Diamond Cut Diamond (London 1950) and A Garland for the Green (London 1962). Selection for the latter was left to Patrick Galvin and Thelma Milne prior to the move back to Dublin and over-emphasises the Irish side of his writing. In later years his poetry became increasingly more autobiographical.
Milne’s 80th birthday was celebrated by the publication of a book of poems largely centred on his youth, The Folded Leaf (Aquila, Isle of Skye, 1983), as well as a special issue of the literary magazine Prospice (#14) and an hour-long poetry reading that he gave in Dublin. He was working to complete another collection, The Broken Arcs, just before his death, but this was never published.
Prose:
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who described himself on various book jackets as "a sailor before the mast, ambulance driver and courier during the Spanish Civil War, a land worker and estate manager in England during and after World War 2" and also "an enthusiast for lost causes - national, political, social and merely human".
Life
He was born in Dublin, of English and Welsh-Irish parents, and was educated at Christchurch Cathedral Grammar School. In 1920 he signed on as a seaman and worked on boats, off and on, until 1935. During the 30s too he began writing and had his first poems published in 1935.The background to the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
contributed to his political awakening and he came to England to work as a voluntary administrator for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in London, for whom he often acted as a medical courier. Milne has also described how he was once unwillingly involved in some arms deal.
Arthur Peacock, a British volunteer in the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
wrote:
After SMA was wound up, Milne returned to Ireland but remained politically active in support of the campaign for the release of Frank Ryan
Frank Ryan (Irish republican)
Frank Ryan was a prominent member of the Irish Republican Army, editor of An Phoblacht, leftist activist and leader of Irish volunteers on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War....
, the leader of the Connolly Column
Connolly Column
The Connolly Column was the name given to the Irish volunteers who fought for the Second Spanish Republic in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. They were named after James Connolly, the executed leader of the Irish Citizen Army...
of Irish volunteers on the Republican side, who had been captured and imprisoned in Spain. At one point Milne took part in a delegation to Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
seeking Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
support for this. In August 1938 he was reported in The Worker's Republic as being one of the 12 member committee of the James Connolly
James Connolly
James Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...
Irish club in London.
During his time in England and Spain, Milne got to know the left-leaning poets who supported the Republican cause, including W.H.Auden, Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
and Cecil Day Lewis. In 1938 his first collection of poems, Forty North Fifty West, was published in Dublin, followed by two others in 1940 and 1941. Having taken a pro-British line in neutral Ireland, he was informed by Karl Petersen, the German press attache in Dublin, that he was on the Nazi death list. This decided him to help in the British war effort and he returned to England with the help of John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
(then working at the British embassy in Ireland).
Between 1942-62 he was resident in England and an active presence on the English literary scene. In particular he became associated with the poets grouped around the magazine Nine, edited by Peter Russell
Peter Russell
Peter Russell M.A., D.C.S. is a British author of ten books and producer of three films on consciousness, spiritual awakening and their role in the future development of humanity. He has designed and taught personal development programs for businesses, and has remained a popular public...
and Ian Fletcher. He and his wife Thelma also backed the young Irish poet Patrick Galvin
Patrick Galvin
Patrick Galvin was an Irish poet, singer, playwright, and prose and screen writer born in Cork's inner city.-Biography:Galvin was born in Cork in 1927 at a time of great political transition in Ireland...
when he launched his own magazine, Chanticleer. This generous encouragement of younger writers was later extended to several others, including John F. Deane
John F. Deane
John F. Deane is an Irish poet and novelist. He founded Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Ireland Review in 1979.-Career:...
, Gerald Dawe
Gerald Dawe
Gerald Dawe is a Northern Irish writer and poet.-Early life:Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and grew up with his mother, sister and grandmother. He attended Orangefield Boys School across the city in East Belfast, a leading progressive liberal state school...
and Maurice Scully
Maurice Scully
Maurice Scully is an Irish poet who works in the modernist tradition. Scully was born in Dublin & educated at Trinity College.Scully's books include Love Poems & Others , 5 Freedoms of Movement , Steps , Livelihood , Sonata, , Tig and Humming...
.
Milne regarded his return to Dublin in 1962 as a disaster, overshadowed as his four-year stay was by quarrels with the establishment, the discovery of betrayal by a friend and the death of his wife from lung cancer. The misery of those events is recorded in Time Stopped (1967); the artistic frustration of the time also resulted in the poems included in Cantata Under Orion (1976). Returning to England in 1966, he settled in Bedford, where he died of a heart attack early in 1987. Politically he remained involved and spoke alongside Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
at the rally on behalf of Biafra in 1968, but his views moved further to the right in later years. He wrote to the Irish Times on April 13, 1976, saying that he'd been "taken in by Stalin and that Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
is Satanism"; he also sided with the Loyalist position in the Ulster conflict.
Milne was twice married. First to Kathleen Ida Bradner in 1927, by whom he had two sons; then in 1948 to Thelma Dobson, by whom he had two more sons.
Poetry
Milne ‘set himself against the Celtic TwilightIrish Literary Revival
The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.-Forerunners:...
school which had dominated his youth’, as The Times obituary put it, much as Yeats’ later poetry sought to undo the twilit fashion set by his own earlier verse. In addition, Milne frequently entered into a poetic dialogue with his contemporaries, but besides Yeats these included Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, among many others. In reality, the Irish sources that inspired Milne were quite other than Yeats.
Both in his conversation and in his poetry, Milne used to complain of being passed over because of his dual heritage: ‘The English see I am not English...To the Irish I am Anglo’. He resisted categorisation, and his changes of residence back and forth across the Irish Sea only added to the problem. From the 1970s onwards, the part he had played during the Spanish Civil War brought his name back into notice and continues to do so: see for example Anna Kathryn Kendrick’s thesis, On Guard with the Junipers: Ewart Milne and Irish Literary Dissent in the Spanish Civil War. The poems he wrote on the subject were largely confined to a section in his second book, Letter from Ireland (1940). These were supplemented by the autobiographically-based stories he wrote at the time, only three of which were published in the 1930s; they and the remaining four, plus a later account of his involvement in a gun-running deal, appeared only in 1985 (Drums Without End, Isle of Skye).
Milne’s poetry was very varied and included the slight, the serious and the sexy. At its best it employed a fluent long-lined narrative, a rhythmically driven rhetoric. There are good examples of this, and of several jeux d’esprit, in his two volumes of selected poems: Diamond Cut Diamond (London 1950) and A Garland for the Green (London 1962). Selection for the latter was left to Patrick Galvin and Thelma Milne prior to the move back to Dublin and over-emphasises the Irish side of his writing. In later years his poetry became increasingly more autobiographical.
Milne’s 80th birthday was celebrated by the publication of a book of poems largely centred on his youth, The Folded Leaf (Aquila, Isle of Skye, 1983), as well as a special issue of the literary magazine Prospice (#14) and an hour-long poetry reading that he gave in Dublin. He was working to complete another collection, The Broken Arcs, just before his death, but this was never published.
Books
Poetry:- Forty North Fifty West (Dublin: Gayfield 1938 with six woodcuts by Cecil Salkeld)
- Letter from Ireland: Verses (Dublin: Gayfield Press 1940), ix, 79pp
- Listen Mangan: Poems (Dublin: Sign of Three Candles 1941), 102pp
- Jubilo: Poems (London: F. Muller Ltd. 1944), vi, 47, [1]pp
- Boding Day (London: F. Muller Ltd. 1947), 22p
- Diamond Cut Diamond: Selected Poems (London: Bodley Head 1950), 64pp
- Elegy for a Lost Submarine (Burnham-on-Crouch: Plow Poems 1951), [8]pp
- Galion: a mock epic with prologue and epilogue (Dublin: Dolmen 1953, title page illustrated by Mia Cranwill)
- Life Arboreal: Poems (Tunbridge Wells: Pound Press 1953), 94, [2]pp
- Once More to Tourney: A Book of Ballads and Light Verse, Serious, Gay and Grisly, intro. by J. M. Cohen (London: Linden Press [1958]), 96pp
- A Garland for the Green: Poems (London: Hutchinson 1962), 95pp
- Time Stopped: A Poem Sequence with Prose Intermissions (London: Plow Poems 1967), 165pp
- Cantata Under Orion (Isle of Skye: Aquila Poetry 1976), 54pp
- Drift of Pinions (Isle of Skye: Aquila & Wayzgoose Press 1976), [16]pp
- The Black Lady, Poetry Ireland poems #14, December 1979, [1]p
- Deus Est Qui Regit Omnia [St. Beuno's Hand Printed Ltd. Edns. No. 9] (Mornington: J. F. & B. Deane 1980), [16]pp
- Spring Offering (Isle of Skye: Aquila 1981)
- The Folded Leaf: Poems 1970-1980 (Isle of Skye: Aquila Poetry 1983), 69pp
Prose:
- Drums Without End (Portree [Isle of Skye]: Aquila 1985), 101pp.
External links
- "Diamond Cut Diamond", a frequently reprinted shaped poem