Patrick Kavanagh



Patrick Kavanagh (Pádraig Caomhánach) (21 October 1904 - 30 November 1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. Kavanagh is regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century; his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger. His work can best be categorised as accounts of Irish life that achieved a universal appeal through reference to commonplace.

Family and youth
Patrick Kavanagh was born in the rural townland of Inniskeen, County Monaghan in 1904. He was the fourth of ten children. His father, James, was a shoemaker and small farmer, the illegitimate son of a schoolteacher called Keaveney which the local priest changed to Kavanagh. The teacher had to leave the area following the scandal and never taught in a national school again.

Kavanagh's family were certainly intelligent - his brother Peter became a university professor and writer, two of his sisters were teachers and three became nurses (two of which were formidable matrons). One became a nun. This was a considerable achievement for a poor family.

Patrick also entered the shoemaking trade after leaving school. He never got beyond 6th class, leaving Kednaminsha National School in 1916, at the age of 13. His love of poetry started at that young age. He once said "I majored in kicking a rag ball", but his education continued as he sat at his father's side and carried out the routine chores on their farm. He self-educated himself with extensive reading, often while outside on the outlying farm under a bush.

For 20 years he lived a life as an ordinary young Irish farmer of the period, toiling for pocket money on the small family farm. His parents bought an additional small farm for him at Shancoduff townland beside Rocksavage Fort. Like all the other local farmers he participated in rural life, bought and sold at fairs and markets, went to Sunday Mass, attended wakes, funerals and weddings of neighbours, played pitch and toss at the crossroads and cycled to dances. He was also goalkeeper for the Inniskeen Gaelic football team.

Kavanagh began writing verse at a young age and he began submitting poems to local and national newspapers. The first to be published appeared in 1928 in the Dundalk Democrat and the Irish Independent. This was followed by poems appearing in literary magazines. He walked the eighty kilometres to Dublin to meet leading literary figures in 1931. In Dublin he met George William Russell (AE), editor of the Irish Statesman, who encouraged him and gave him books, among them works by Feodor Dostoyevsky, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Robert Browning. AE also introduced Kavanagh to other literary figures. At the same time he joined Dundalk library and the first book he borrowed was The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. He became increasingly dissatisfied with the confines of rural life, wanting recognition as a poet, and to associate with like minded people. In 1938 he left Inniskeen for London and remained there for about five months. In 1939 he finally settled in Dublin.

After World War II Kavanagh needed money and work was nigh impossible to be found in the Irish Free State and the Dublin area in particular. His instinct was to return to Inniskeen, County Monaghan but for some unknown reason he sought work in late 1946 in Belfast as a barman, working in a number of Public Houses in the Falls Road area. During this period he lodged in the Beechmount area in a house where he was related to the tenant through the tenant's brother-in-law in Ballymackney, County Monaghan.

A misunderstanding with the son-in-law of the tenant resulted in his leaving this house but almost immediately he found accommodation in the St. James' area of Belfast in a house owned by the previously named tenant's son. He stayed in this new accommodation until late 1949 whilst still working as a bar-man and earning some additional money writing articles for local publications under various names. He returned to Dublin circa. mid-November 1949.

Early work, recognition and middle age
His rural background was reflected in his first volume of poems, “’’The Ploughman and Other Poems’’” which was published in 1936 by Macmillan Publishers to critical acclaim. Two years later “’’The Green Fool’’”, an autobiography, was published. He was sued for libel by the writer Oliver St. John Gogarty for his description of his first visit to Gogarty's home: "I mistook Gogarty's white-robed maid for his wife or his mistress; I expected every poet to have a spare wife." Gogarty, who had taken unreasonable offense at the close coupling of the words "wife" and "mistress", was awarded £100 in damages and the book was withdrawn. By the early 1940s his poems were beginning to attract attention of the literary circle. As an individual he was regarded as an uncouth outsider. In 1942 ‘’The Great Hunger’’, which is one of his most admired works, appeared. Patrick Maguire, the central character, is a hired hand in a rural, frugal land. Sex-starved and sex-obsessed, Maguire is a serial masturbator, a waster of seed who is mocked by teeming, fecund nature all around.‘’The Great Hunger’’ however did not enjoy unanimous or universal approval and all copies of ‘’The Horizon’’ literary magazine in which it was published were seized by An Garda Síochána on the order of the Minister for Justice because the work was regarded by some as an attack on the sexual policies of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and considered inappropriate by conservative political establishment. At the time of writing it he was being feted by John Betjeman, later British Poet Laureate, who was press attache/intelligence operative at the British Embassy in Dublin during WWII. Kavanagh worked as a part time journalist, writing a gossip column in the Irish Press under the pseudonym Piers Plowman from 1942 to 1944 and acted as film critic for that same publication from 1945 to 1949. In 1946 the Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid found Kavanagh a job on the Catholic magazine 'The Standard' and continued to support him throughout his life. His novel ‘’Tarry Flynn’’ was published in 1948, and was also banned in Ireland (although later unbanned on appeal). It was a fictional account of rural life and would later be made into a play and performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1966. Kavanagh's personality, varying from gruff to charming, became progressively quixotic as his drinking increased over the years and his health deteriorated. Eventually, a disheveled figure, he would move about the Dublin bars drinking whiskey with a predilection for turning on benefactors and friends.

Later career and death
In 1949 Kavanagh began to write a Diary for Envoy, a literary publication founded by John Ryan, who became a lifelong friend and benefactor. The Envoy offices were at 39 Grafton Street and most of the journal’s business was conducted in the nearby pub, McDaid’s, which Kavanagh subsequently adopted as his city-centre local. Antoinette Quinn, in her biography says: " His association with Envoy brought him into contact with a circle of young artists and intellectuals. Chief among these, apart from John Ryan himself, were Anthony Cronin, Patrick Swift and, to a lesser extent at first, John Jordan... In conversation with Anthony Cronin, Kavanagh sometimes referred to his Envoy days as a time of poetic rebirth." In 1952, In conjunction with (and financed by) his brother Peter, Kavanagh published his own journal, "Kavanagh’s Weekly: A Journal of Literature and Politics" which ran to some 13 editions. In 1954, two major events changed Kavanagh's life: firstly, he embarked on a libel action and ended up being defeated; then shortly after he lost the action he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was admitted to hospital where he had a lung removed. It was while recovering from this operation by relaxing on the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin that Kavanagh rediscovered his poetic vision. He began to appreciate nature and his surroundings and took his inspiration from this for much of his later poetry, and a new phase of poetry followed. Kavanagh was now receiving the acclaim which he had always felt he deserved. In 1956 Kavanagh, through Patrick Swift’s efforts, had 19 poems appear in the English literary journal Nimbus. Antoinette Quinn says " Publication there was to prove a turning point…The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964)...". In 1960 Kavanagh appeared in Swift's legendary ‘X’ magazine. During this period Kavanagh sheltered on and off with the Swift's in Westbourne Terrace. He gave lectures at University College Dublin and in the United States(under the patronage of a contact Swift had introduced Kavanagh to). He represented Ireland at literary symposia and became a judge of the Guinness Poetry Awards. In London he often stayed with his publisher, Martin Green & his wife, Fiona in their house in Tottenham Street. Fitzrovia. It was at this time Martin produced Kavanagh's Collected Poems ("following the suggestion of the painter Patrick Swift and the poet Anthony Cronin ) for Martin Brian & O'Keeffe. In the introduction Kavanagh wrote "A man innocently dabbles in words and rhymes and finds that it is his life".

He married his long term companion Katherine Barry Moloney (niece of Kevin Barry) in April 1967. The novel Tarry Flynn was adapted for the stage by P.J. O'Connor and performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin that year.

Kavanagh fell ill at the first performance of the play in the Dundalk Town Hall and he died later that week in a Dublin nursing home on 30 November 1967. His grave is in Inniskeen adjoining the Patrick Kavanagh Centre. His wife Katherine died in 1989; she is also buried there.

Themes
Kavanagh was a poet formed by his experiences in his native Monaghan and later in his adopted Dublin. He constantly repeats country townland names to connect with his native countryside. This is repeated with street names in Dublin in later poems. Most of his poems are geographically rooted. This is summed up in the concluding lines of "Epic" ..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."Stony Grey Soil" depicts Kavanagh's awareness of nature. It shows the bitterness and the tragedy of his life there. In the poem he is ill at ease in a countryside and culture he condemns. He uses verbs such as clogged, and burgled to display his sense of desperation and loss. Kavanagh has a love-hate relationship with his native countryside. In Dublin he wrote many satirical poems condemning the prevalent hypocrisy of the literary and political establishment. Kavanagh's love of nature was rekindled following his operation for lung cancer. He said "As a poet I was born in or about 1955, the place of my birth being the banks of the Grand Canal". After having been near death he could look at life and nature with new found wonder. Nature is glorified in a pantheistic manner in the poetry written from then on. Kavanagh had come full circle and was at peace with himself and the world.

Language
Kavanagh's use of language in some poems convey the mystery and magic of a child's mind, looking at the commonplace as though for the first time with wonder. He uses simple language forms and edited his poetry continuously to simplify them. Colloquial language is an intrinsic element of Kavanagh's style. His phraseology is conversational and many of his phrases owe their origin to his Monaghan background-: "And we'll hear it among decent men too/ Who barrow dung in gardens under trees", "he stared at me half eyed" and "every blooming thing".

He sometimes creates new uses of words by coining adverbs and adjectives from existing nouns. In the poem "Lines Written on a seat on the Grand Canal Dublin" words such as 'stilly', 'greeny', 'Niagariously' and 'Parnassian' represent this feature of Kavanagh's language. He occasionally combined existing words to form a new one (Neologism). In "Advent", the word 'dreeping' is a fusion of the words dripping and creeping which is designed to create in the mind of the reader the qualities of both words.

He occasionally used exaggeration for poetic effect (Hyperbole) "The tremendous silence of mid-July". In "Inniskeen Road: July evening", the comparison with Alexander Selkirk leads him to consider Inniskeen Road as "a mile of kingdom". In "Advent" "The spirit-shocking wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill", or"the luxury of a child's soul".

Kavanagh's use of allusion is another aspect in many of his poems. In "Stony Grey Soil", he refers to the poise and stride of Apollo. In "Advent" he alludes to the nativity "old stables where Time begins".

He has been criticised for over use of classical sonnet styles and rhymes in many poems which constricted his poetic capabilities. This was undoubtably a result of his self education which started using "The Golden Treasury".

Recognition
Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney is acknowledged to have been influenced by Kavanagh. He was introduced to Kavanagh's poetry by the writer Michael MacLaverty when they taught together at St Thomas's Belfast. Their poetry shares a belief in the capacity of the local, or parochial, to reveal the universal. He has said that Kavanagh's poetry"had a transformative effect on the general culture and liberated the gifts of the poetic generations who came after him." He noted "Kavanagh is a truly representative modern figure in that his subversiveness was turned upon himself: dissatisfaction, both spiritual and artistic, is what inspired his growth...His instruction and example helped us to see an essential difference between what he called the parochial and provincial mentalities" As Kavanagh put it All great civilizations are based on the parish. He concludes that Kavanagh's poetry vindicates his "indomitable faith in himself and in the art that made him so much more than himself" Unlearnedly and unreasonably poetry is shaped / Awkwardly but alive in the unmeasured womb.

When the Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000, ten of Kavanagh's poems were in the top fifty, and he was rated the second favourite poet behind W.B. Yeats.

Kavangh's poem "On Raglan Road," set to the traditional air (Fáinne Geal an Lae) composed by Thomas Connellan in the 17th century, has been performed by numerous artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Luke Kelly, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Sinéad O'Connor, Joan Osborne and many other singers.

There is a statue of Kavanagh by Dublin's Grand Canal, inspired by his poem "Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin": " O commemorate me where there is water, canal water preferably, so stilly greeny at the heart of summer. Brother commemorate me thus beautifully."

Every 17 March, after the St Patrick's day parade, a group of Kavanagh's friends gather at the Kavanagh seat on the banks of the Grand Canal at Mespil road in his honour. There is also another, original, seat situated on the South Bank at the Lock Gates close to Baggot Street Bridge (As is well known from his poem and heavy hints to his friends, he wished to be commemorated with a simple canal side seat near the lock gates of Baggot Street Bridge). It was erected by his friends, led by John Ryan and Denis Dwyer, in 1968.

His poetic tribute to his friend the Irish American sculptor Jerome Connor was used in the plague overlooking Dublin's Phoenix Park dedicated to Connor.

There is also a statue of Patrick Kavanagh located outside the Irish pub and restaurant, Raglan Road, at Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida.

The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is presented each year for an unpublished collection of poems

The annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend takes place on the last weekend in November in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland.

The Patrick Kavanagh Centre.an interpretative centre set up to commemorate the poet, is located in Inniskeen.

The actor Russell Crowe has stated he is a fan of Kavanagh. "I like the clarity and the emotiveness of (Patrick) Kavanagh. I like how he combines the kind of mystic into really clear, evocative work that can make you glad you are alive". In February 2002, Crowe quoted Kavanagh during his acceptance speech at the annual BAFTA awards. When he became aware that the Kavanagh quote had been cut from the final broadcast he became aggressive with the BBC Producer responsible. he said "the thing is that it was about a one minute fifty speech but they've cut a minute out of it". The poem that was cut was sanctity a four line poem that he delivered in less than a minute To be a poet and not know the trade,/To be a lover and repel all women;/Twin ironies by which great saints are made,/The agonising pincer-jaws of heaven.

Kavanagh Archive
In 1986, Peter Kavanagh negotiated the sale of Patrick Kavanagh's papers as well as a large collection of his own work devoted to the late poet to University College Dublin. The purchase was enabled by a public appeal for funds by the late Professor Gus Martin. He included in the sale his original hand press which he had built. The archive is housed in a special collections room in UCD's library, and the hand press is on loan to the Patrick Kavanagh Centre, Inniskeen.

The contents include:
 * Early literary material containing verses, novels, prose writing and other publications; family correspondence containing letters to Cecilia Kavanagh and Peter Kavanagh; letters to Patrick Kavanagh from various sources (1926–40).
 * Later literary material containing verses, novels, articles, lectures, published works, galley page proofs, Kavanagh’s Weekly, and adaptations of Patrick’s work (1940–1967).
 * Documents concerning libel case of Kavanagh v The Leader (1952–54).
 * Personal correspondence including correspondence with his sisters, Peter Kavanagh, Katherine Barry Moloney (1947–1967).
 * Printed material, press cuttings, publications, personal memorabilia, and tape recordings (1940–67).

Peter Kavanagh 's papers include thesis, plays, antobiographical writing, and printed material, personal and general correspondence memorabilia, tape recordings, galley proofs (1941–82) and family memorabilia (1872–1967).

Copyright problems
Ownership of the copyright is vested in Trustees of The Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Trust by virtue of the terms of the will of the late Kathleen Kavanagh, widow of the poet, who in turn became entitled to the copyright on the death of her husband. The proceeds of the trust are used to support deserving writers. The Trustees are Leland Bardwell, Patrick MacEntee, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Eunan O'Halpin, and Macdara Woods. This was disputed by the late Peter Kavanagh who continued publishing his work after Patrick's death. This dispute led some books to go out of print. Most of his work is now available in the UK and Ireland but the status in the United States is more uncertain.

Poetry

 * Ploughman, and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1936.
 * The Great Hunger: A poem. Cuala, 1942; Irish University Press, 1971.
 * A Soul for Sale: Poems. London: Macmillan, 1947.
 * Recent Poems. Hand Press, 1958.
 * Come Dance With Kitty Stobling, and other poems. Longmans, Green, 1960; Dufour, 1964.
 * Collected Poems. Devin-Adair, 1964.
 * The Complete Poems of Patrick Kavanagh (edited by brother, Peter Kavanagh). Hand Press, 1972.
 * Lough Derg. Goldsmith, 1978; Martin Brian & O'Keefe, 1978.
 * The Great Hunger: Poem into play (with Tom Mac Intyre). Mullingar, CO: Lilliput Press, 1988.

Novels

 * The Green Fool (fictionalized autobiography). M. Joseph, 1938; Harper, 1939; Martin Brian & O'Keefe, 1971.
 * Tarry Flynn: A novel. Pilot, 1948; Devin-Adair, 1949; Martin Brian & O'Keefe, 1972.
 * By Night Unstarred: An autobiographical novel (edited by Peter Kavanagh). Goldsmith, 1977; Hand Press, 1978.

Non-fiction

 * 1958-59 (Author of afterword) Peter Kavanagh, Irish Mythology: A dictionary (3 volumes). Hand Press, 1958-1959.
 * Self Portrait (autobiographical television script). Dolmen, 1964.
 * (Author of introduction) W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish Life. MacGibbon & Kee, 1966.
 * Collected Prose. MacGibbon & Kee, 1967.
 * (Author of introduction) The Autobiography of William Carleton. MacGibbon & Kee, 1968.
 * (With Peter Kavanagh and others) Kavanagh's Weekly: A journal of literature and politics (anthology). Goldsmith, 1981.
 * No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh: An anthology. Dublin: Columba Press, 2002.

Edited

 * Selected Poems of Ivor Gurnery (Selected and introduced by Patrick Kavanagh). New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Collected editions

 * November Haggard: Uncollected Prose and Verse of Patrick Kavanagh (edited by Peter Kavanagh). Hand Press, 1971.
 * A Patrick Kavanagh Anthology (edited by Eugene Robert Platt). Commedia, 1973.

Letters

 * (With Peter Kavanagh) Lapped Furrows: Correspondence, 1933-1967, Between Patrick and Peter Kavanagh, With Other Documents (edited by Peter Kavanagh). Hand Press, 1969.
 * (With Peter Kavanagh and others) Love's Tortured Headland: A Sequel to Lapped Furrows (correspondence; edited by Peter Kavanagh). Hand Press, 1974.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Sound recording

 * Almost Everything. Claddagh, 1964.