Patrick Kavanagh
| Patrick Kavanagh | |
|---|---|
Patrick Kavanagh, by Patrick Swift, 1960
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| Born |
21 October 1904 Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland |
| Died | 30 November 1967 (aged 63) Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Period | 1928–67 |
| Genre | Irish poet, novelist |
| Subject | Irish life, nature |
Patrick Kavanagh (21 October 1904 – 30 November 1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. His best-known works include the novel Tarry Flynn, and the poems "On Raglan Road" and "The Great Hunger". He is known for his accounts of Irish life through reference to the everyday and commonplace.
Patrick Kavanagh was born in rural Inniskeen, County Monaghan, in 1904, the fourth of the ten children of Bridget Quinn. His grandfather was a schoolteacher called "Keaveney", which a local priest changed to "Kavanagh". The grandfather had to leave the area following a scandal and never taught in a national school again. Patrick Kavanagh's father, James, was a cobbler and farmer. Kavanagh's brother Peter became a university professor and writer, two of their sisters were teachers, three became nurses, and one became a nun.
Patrick Kavanagh was a pupil at Kednaminsha National School from 1909 to 1916, leaving in the sixth year at the age of 13. He became apprenticed to his father as a shoemaker and worked on his farm. He was also goalkeeper for the Inniskeen Gaelic football team. He later reflected: "Although the literal idea of the peasant is of a farm labouring person, in fact a peasant is all that mass of mankind which lives below a certain level of consciousness. They live in the dark cave of the unconscious and they scream when they see the light." He also commented that, although he had grown up in a poor district, "the real poverty was lack of enlightenment [and] I am afraid this fog of unknowing affected me dreadfully."
Kavanagh's first published work appeared in 1928 in the Dundalk Democrat and the Irish Independent. Kavanagh had encountered a copy of the Irish Statesman, edited by George William Russell, who published under the pen name AE and was a leader of the Irish Literary Revival. Russell at first rejected Kavanagh's work but encouraged him to keep submitting, and he went on to publish verse by Kavanagh in 1929 and 1930. This inspired the farmer to leave home and attempt to further his aspirations. In 1931, he walked 80 kilometres to meet Russell in Dublin, where Kavanagh's brother was a teacher. Russell gave Kavanagh books, among them works by Feodor Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Browning, and became Kavanagh's literary adviser. Kavanagh joined Dundalk Library and the first book he borrowed was The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
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