Kevin Kiely (poet)

Kevin Kiely (born 2 June 1953) is a poet, novelist, critic and playwright whose writings and public statements have met with controversy.

Kiely was born on 2 June 1953 in Warrenpoint, County Down. His grandfather's brother was the Olympian John Jesus Flanagan, inventor of the hammer for Slazenger America as used in the Olympic Games, and three-time record-breaking gold medallist. Kiely's childhood was spent in many parts of Ireland due to his father's work with the Munster & Leinster Bank. Aged 7, he was sent to Wimbledon London to his aunt. In 1963 on the death of his father, John Francis Kiely, he was sent by his guardian and uncle, Edward Vaughan-Neil, to Mt St. Joseph's Abbey, Roscrea where he was a boarder from 1966-1969. He completed his education in Blackrock College, Dublin, from 1969-1971.

He became a field study technician for Smedley HP in Cambridgeshire 1973-1975 and wandered in Europe working part-time at various jobs while reading in the national libraries of many countries, but otherwise mainly residing in Paris and London. Kiely attended University College Galway in 1976, participating on the Art Council-funded National Writers Workshop, and was made an honorary fellow of Iowa University in 1983. He holds a Masters in Literature from Trinity College in 2005 and a PhD from University College Dublin in 2009. His doctoral thesis on John L. Sweeney: Patron of Poetry at Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room gained him an American Fulbright Award in 2007, enabling years of full-time lecturing at American universities including Boise State University and University of Idaho (Moscow), and research at Harvard.

Kiely co-edited The Belle, a counter-cultural magazine with Maurice Scully from 1978-1979. He moved from Dublin to Spain where he taught at Colegio Xaloc and gave public lectures on poetry and literature.

Quintesse, published in 1982 in Dublin by Co-Op Books, found a New York publisher in 1985. During this period he was invited to the University of Iowa on the International Writing Programme Fellowship working with the American poet Paul Engel as well as poets Gary Snyder, Marvin Bell and Jorie Graham. Mere Mortals, an experimental pastiche of the post-Joycean novel, was published in 1989 in Dublin.

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