Brendan Kennelly

Timothy Brendan Kennelly (17 April 1936 – 17 October 2021), usually known as Brendan Kennelly, was an Irish poet and novelist.

Kennelly was born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on 17 April 1936.

He was one of eight children of Tim Kennelly and Bridie (Ahern).

His father worked as a publican and garage proprietor; his mother was a nurse.

Kennelly was educated at the inter-denominational St. Ita's College, Tarbert, County Kerry.

He was then awarded a scholarship to study English and French at Trinity College Dublin.

There he was editor of Icarus and captained the Trinity Gaelic Football Club.

He graduated from Trinity in 1961 with first-class honours, before obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy there in 1967.

He also studied at Leeds University for one year under the tutelage of Norman Jeffares.

He also authored two novels, "The Crooked Cross" (1963) and "The Florentines" (1967), and three plays in a Greek Trilogy, Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women.

A prolific and fluent writer, there are more than fifty volumes of poetry 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).

He became a fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 1967, and a senior fellow in 1989.

Kennelly's poetry can be scabrous, down-to-earth, and colloquial.

He avoided 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".

Kennelly married Margaret (Peggy) O'Brien in 1969.

They were colleagues at the time, and she taught at English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst at the time of his death.

Together, they had one child, Kristen “Doodle” Kennelly.

They resided in Sandymount before getting divorced, which Kennelly attributed to his overindulgence in alcohol.

Kennelly was an Irish language (Gaelic) speaker, and translated Irish poems in "A Drinking Cup" (1970) and "Mary" (Dublin 1987).

He ultimately became teetotal in about 1985.

Doodle died in April 2021, six months before her father.

Kennelly died on 17 October 2021, at a care home in Listowel, where he resided in the two years leading up to his death.

He was 85 years old.

A selection of his collected translations was published as "Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish" (1989).

Language was 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.

His 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.

Regarding the oral tradition, Kennelly was 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.

He commented on his own use of language: "Poetry is an attempt to cut through the effects of deadening familiarity … to reveal that inner sparkle."

Another long (400-page) epic poem, "The Book of Judas", published in 1991, topped the Irish best-seller list.

Kennelly 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 was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005.

Following his retirement he was a Professor Emeritus at Trinity College.