“I DABBLED IN VERSE AND IT BECAME MY LIFE”.
(PATRICK KAVANAGH)
It National Poetry Day today (2nd Oct)
I have always liked Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry and so I am going to post his poem ‘Innocence’ .for the day that is in it.
Poet and novelist 1904-1967 controversial and outspoken he fought valiantly to be accepted as a writer and poet and not just ‘The Boy from Monaghan’ as Dublin’s literary society thought him in the 1930s
He was a most unlikely person to become a poet. Born into a rural farming background, he left school at twelve to be apprentice shoemaker to his father. Later, he worked on the home farm in Monaghan before walking to Dublin to try and build on the poetry he’d had publish in his home newspaper.
Despite his brother’s support in Dublin he lived the life of an improvised poet. His first novel Tarry Flynn was banned for a short while. He went head to head with publishers who considered him an enigma because he told it how it was for country farmers and not the romanticised imaginings of some city writers perception of country living. His book The Ploughman and other Poems’ initially got nowhere. But despite this he kept writing.
An Irish farmer writing poetry in the 1939? I wonder what people really thought.
In the high literary circles of Dublin it took a long time for his genius to be recognised. Strangely, it was an illness that changes his literary fate.
Later, he gave lectures in Trinity College Dublin and in America.
He married Kathleen Maloney in early 1967 and sadly died on 30th of November of the same year.
When the Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000 Ten of Patrick Kavanagh’s poems were in the top fifty – Yeats was the only other more popular poems.
POEM TITLE INNOCE
They laughed at one I loved-
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth
They said That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.
But I knew that love’s doorway to life Is the same doorway everywhere.
Ashamed of what I loved I flung her from me and called her a ditch
Although she was smiling at me with violets.
But now I am back in her briary arms
The dew of an Indian Summer lies On bleached potato-stalks
What age am I?
I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women, Nothing of cities, I
cannot die Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges
I think the words and the sentiment of the poem tells how Patrick Kavanagh hurt inside at the Dublin literary world perception of his work and his beloved Monaghan. He realised they thought he would never amount to much if he didn’t drop his love of writing about his beloved homeplace.” They said that I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges…”
He was being urged to change, conform – fling Monaghan from him – if he was to be accepted and successful.
Maybe he did – for a while – forgot s his roots – but he regained his self perspective again and died proud of the country background he loved.
Comments welcome on what you make of the poem
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 