Brendan Kennelly (born 1936) is a popular Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. He is now retired and occasionally tours the USA as university lecturer.
He was born in
BallylongfordBallylongford is a village near Listowel in north County Kerry, Ireland.-Geography:...
, Co Kerry on 17th April 1936 and was educated at the inter-denominational St. Ita's College, Tarbert, Co. Kerry, and at Trinity College, where he edited
IcarusIcarus is a student literary magazine based in Trinity College, Dublin. It publishes one issue per academic term and accepts submissions of poetry, prose and drama from students, staff and alumni of Dublin University It was founded in 1950 by Alec Reid and has been published with regularity three...
.
Brendan Kennelly (born 1936) is a popular Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. He is now retired and occasionally tours the USA as university lecturer.
Early life
He was born in
BallylongfordBallylongford is a village near Listowel in north County Kerry, Ireland.-Geography:...
, Co Kerry on 17th April 1936 and was educated at the inter-denominational St. Ita's College, Tarbert, Co. Kerry, and at Trinity College, where he edited
IcarusIcarus is a student literary magazine based in Trinity College, Dublin. It publishes one issue per academic term and accepts submissions of poetry, prose and drama from students, staff and alumni of Dublin University It was founded in 1950 by Alec Reid and has been published with regularity three...
. Kennelly graduated from Trinity and wrote his PhD thesis there. He also studied at Leeds University.
Poetry
Kennelly’s poetry can be scabrous, down-to-earth and colloquial. He avoids intellectual pretension and literary posturing, and his attitude to poetic language could be summed up in the title of one of his epic poems, “Poetry my Arse”. Another long (400 page) epic poem, “The Book of Judas”, published in 1991, topped the Irish bestseller list.
He is a prolific and fluent writer, with more than twenty books of poems to his credit, including My Dark Fathers (1964), Collection One: Getting Up Early (1966), Good Souls to Survive (1967), Dream of a Black Fox (1968), Love Cry (1972), The Voices (1973), Shelley in Dublin (1974), A Kind of Trust (1975), Islandman (1977), A Small Light (1979) and The House That Jack Didn’t Build (1982).
Kennelly is no stranger to literary controversy, particularly in works such as “Cromwell”, about the English
Roundhead"Roundhead" was the nickname given to the supporters of Parliament during the English Civil War. Also known as Parliamentarians, they were the supporters of Oliver Cromwell against King Charles I. Cromwell rose to prominence as a Member of Parliament and Parliamentary soldier, and eventually...
and Puritan whose army sacked the small Irish city of Drogheda and slaughtered its
RoyalistCavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I during the English Civil War . Prince Rupert, commander of much of Charles I's cavalry, is often considered an archetypical Cavalier.-Early usage:...
garrison and townspeople in 1649.
Kennelly has edited several other anthologies, including “Between Innocence and Peace: Favourite Poems of Ireland” (1993), “Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present, with Katie Donovan and A. Norman Jeffares” (1994), and “Dublines,” with Katie Donovan (1995).
He is also the author of two novels, “The Crooked Cross” (1963) and “The Florentines” (1967), and three plays in a Greek Trilogy,
AntigoneAntigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written before or in 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
,
MedeaMedea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...
and
The Trojan WomenThe Trojan Women is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier in 415 BC , the same year...
.
Kennelly is an
Irish languageIrish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used...
(Gaelic) speaker, and has translated Irish poems in “A Drinking Cup” (1970) and “Mary” (Dublin 1987). A selection of his collected translations was published as “Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish” (1989).
Controversies
Kennelly is a much-loved poet in Ireland, but his overall place in the Irish poetic canon may be somewhat controversial, Some consider “Cromwell” to be a major work, one of the most important Irish poems of the twentieth century. Others may prefer to think of him, despite his academic standing, as anti-intellectual or lacking in complexity in a period when modernist poetry, from TS Eliot to the later works of William Butler Yeats, tended to be esoteric and difficult.
Style
Language is important in Kennelly’s work – in particular the vernacular of the small and isolated communities in North Kerry where he grew up, and of the Dublin streets and pubs where he became both roamer and raconteur for many years. Kennelly’s language is also grounded in the Irish-language poetic tradition, oral and written, which can be both satirical and salacious in its approach to human follies.
In regard to the oral tradition, Kennelly is a great reciter of verse with tremendous command and the rare ability to recall extended poems by memory, both his own work and others, and recite them on call verbatim.
Kennelly has commented on his own use of language: “Poetry is an attempt to cut through the effects of deadening familiarity and repeated, mechanical usage in order to unleash that profound vitality, to reveal that inner sparkle. In the beginning was the Word. In the end will be the Word…language is a human miracle always in danger of drowning in a sea of familiarity.”
Works
- Cast a Cold Eye (1959) with Rudi Holzapfel
Rudolf Patrick Holzapfel, born in Paris, France, on December 11, 1938, died February 6, 2005 in Bonn, Germany was an Irish poet and teacher....
- The Rain, the Moon (1961) with Rudi Holzapfel
- The Dark About Our Loves (1962) Rudi Holzapfel
- Green Townlands (1963). Rudi Holzapfel
- Let Fall No Burning Leaf (1963)
- The Crooked Cross (1963) novel
- My Dark Fathers (1964)
- Up and At It (1965)
- Collection One: Getting Up Early (1966)
- Good Souls to Survive (1967)
- The Florentines (1967) novel
- Dream of a Black Fox (1968)
- Selected Poems (1969)
- A Drinking Cup, Poems from the Irish (1970)
- The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (19700 editor
- Bread (1971)
- Love Cry (1972)
- Salvation, The Stranger (1972)
- The Voices (1973)
- Shelley in Dublin (1974)
- A Kind of Trust (1975)
- New and Selected Poems (1976)
- Cromwell (1983)
- Mary, from the Irish of Muireadach Albanach Ó Dálaigh (1987)
- A Time for Voices: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (1990)
- Euripides' Medea (1991)
- The Book of Judas (1991)
- Poetry Me Arse (1995)
- The Man Made of Rain (1998)
- The Singing Tree (1998)
- Glimpses (2001)
- The Little Book of Judas (2002)
- Reservoir Voices (2009)