Along The Enchanted Way

Celebrating the life of poet Patrick Kavanagh and writer John B. Keane in the National Concert Hall on Thursday, the 20th of October.

Brendan Kennelly and guests celebrate the life, loves and works Patrick Kavanagh and John B. Keane through music, poetry, story and song.

 

Since his death in 1967 Patrick Kavanagh has become one of Ireland's most popular poets. When the Irish Times compiled a list of the nation's favourite poems in 2000, ten of Patrick Kavanagh's poems where in the top 50. His most well known work is his songs of unrequited love, "Raglan Road" made popular as a ballad in the '60s by The Dubliners.

 

Patrick Kavanagh was born in 1904 in the townland of Mucker in Inniskeen parish, County Monaghan. The son of small farmer and cobbler, James Kavanagh and Bridget Quinn, he attended Kednaminsha National School and worked on the family farm after leaving school. The Dundalk Democrat and Weekly Independent printed his earliest poems and three poems in The Irish Statesman gave him an early introduction to the Irish literary scene through George Russell.

 

In the 1930s, Kavanagh published Ploughman and Other Poems, an autobiography The Green Fool and returned to Ireland after seeking a literary career in London. A poet who eulogised and critiqued Irish rural life in equal measure, his most striking aside at the conservatism and sexual frustration of rural communities came in his poem, The Great Hunger. He published another book of poems A Soul for Sale in 1947 and his wonderful autobiography, Tarry Flynn in 1948.

 

With the help of his brother Peter, Kavanagh wrote and edited a paper called Kavanagh's Weekly focusing on contemporary literature and political life. After a losing a libel case with The Leader and receiving treatment for cancer, Kavanagh experienced a personal and spiritual rebirth. Kavanagh wrote some of his best work in this period publishing Recent Poems and Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and his Collected Poems coming out in 1964.

National Concert Hall
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Win an I-Pod Shuffle !!
  

Time: 8pm

Tickets: €25/€20

 

Tickets are available from the National Concert Hall Boxing Office.

 

National Concert Hall

Earlsfort Terrace,

Dublin 2.

Tel: + 353 (0) 1 4170000