Patrick Kavanagh
Born in Inniskeen, county Monaghan, 121 years ago tomorrow (21 October), Patrick Kavanagh is, to many, one of the great Irish poets of the 20th Century. Presenting and finding things in the ordinary, in the landscape and in the world around him, Kavanagh’s poems have interested generations of Irish men and women. Perhaps you remember Kavanagh from your school days. If so, what was your favourite piece? Mine are numerous but the lines from his poem, Epic, are among my favourite:
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
Depicting a local row’ in county Monaghan and comparing it to the year of the Munich bother (1938) it was classic Kavanagh.
When he died in November 1967, the Belfast Newsletter, provided the following report:
Death of Patrick Kavanagh
Ireland's leading poet, Patrick Kavanagh, died in a Dublin nursing: home yesterday, aged 62. He published numerous poems and a few novels, including Tarry Flynn and The Green Fool. He leaves a widow but no children. Tarry Flynn, a novel of the Irish countryside, which was banned in Eire four days after publication began in a Dublin magazine in 1948, was adapted and produced in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, last year.
Broadcast: Mr. Kavanagh had been a contributor to well-known periodicals and journals in Eire, Britain and the United States and also broadcast on literary topics from Radio Eireann and the B.B.C.
He married Miss Katherine Moloney, a niece of Kevin Barry. Born in Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan, in 1905, he started life as a small farmer and his first book of verse was entitled Ploughman and Other Poems. In 1942 he published The Great Hunger, one of his best-known poems. Later he became a columnist in a Dublin newspaper and then film critic with The Catholic Standard.
For more information search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )