Poets of grace and greatness
One a figure of strong Irish femininity, the other a giving, genial intellect. May Máire Mhac an tSaoi and Brendan Kennelly rest in peace
THE unseasonably warm October weather saw mists rising from the fields round the village of Ballylongford and the sea at Dún Chaoin on the Kerry coast. It was a Monday like so many others; students lifting their faces to the sunshine in the historic quadrangle of Trinity College, while across the country others leafed through the pages of their poetry books, seeking out the words of the names they had heard on the radio or on the TV news. But it was a day, too, where Ireland was once again a country facing up to an immeasurable loss of two cultural greats, poets whose words had provided hope and solace to so many.
Brendan Kennelly was brought up in Ballylongford village, Co. Kerry. Though she was born in Dublin, the Gaeltacht area of Dún Chaoin inspired Máire Mhac an tSaoi to put pen to paper.
As both passed away over the weekend, the literary community of Ireland mourned, as did those who were inspired by their work – from the schoolchildren who read their words on the page for Leaving Cert courses to the TV viewers who remember Kennelly’s magnificence beside his friend Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show. It was a moment
‘One of the most memorable nights of TV ever’
in time when, in a normal segment to close the show, Byrne rang the competition winner to break the news, which normally would be received with delight.
This time, however, the woman on the end of the phone told Gay – and the millions watching – that her daughter had died, that she was waking her child at home, that the girl had been the one who posted the competition entry for her just days before she lost her own life in a car crash. There were seconds of silence as a nation held its breath before Kennelly began to recite his poem Begin, as words of solace for the distraught woman and for the viewers at home, in a moment that Gay Byrne described as ‘one of the most memorable nights of TV ever’.
It was also a moment that typified the man, a poet who, despite his lofty academic status and critical acclaim, always had ordinary people at his heart.
Born in 1936, the third boy of six and two girls to Timmy Kennelly, a garage owner who would later become a publican, and Bridie Ahern, a nurse, Kennelly once said he had asked his mother to tell him the secret of life. Bridie replied: ‘To love as much as you can.’ And that is the mantra by which Kennelly would try to live his life.
He was always clever and at the age of 16, won a scholarship to Trinity College. The Reid Scholarship was originally set aside for Kerry students from poor backgrounds and when he won, Kennelly was awarded a special dispensation from the Bishop of Kerry to attend.
Even then, though, the upperclass airs of the students at the hallowed Dublin college and the sophisticated city ways were at odds with the country boy.
‘I was absolutely alone,’ he said in a 1996 interview. ‘I think I was the only rural Irishman in the place at that time. The rooms were so cold and dark and high ... a kind of 19th century prevailed.’
The feeling of being an outsider persisted and he deferred his course and left to work in the ESB and moved to London where he worked on the buses before finally taking up his place at Trinity.
Kennelly’s first book of poetry was published while he was still a student and thus began a career that saw over 30 volumes of poetry published outside of two novels and at least one play.
He is best known for his provocative Cromwell (1983), The Book Of Judas (1991) and Poetry My Arse (1995), which were bestsellers as well as being critically acclaimed.
Despite his initial trepidation about Trinity, Kennelly began teaching at the university in the 1960s and remained a member of staff until he retired in 2005. Even then he still lived on campus.
His work as a teacher and Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity was as powerful as his books of poetry – yesterday hundreds of his former charges took to social media to pay tribute to a tutor who was both kind and encouraging to those who were lucky enough to sit in his lecture halls. Critic and UCD academic Dr Declan Kiberd previously said his decision to become a teacher was inspired by hearing Kennelly lecture. ‘It was very exciting. He sent an almost physical charge through the bodies in the room. In an age which prided itself on being cool – and Trinity in the 1960s was cool – he was hot, passionate and engaged,’ he said. ‘Suddenly I was very taken with the idea of being a teacher.’
For his own part, Kennelly said he wanted to bring out the best in each of his charges by using critical praise. ‘I try to connect with what is unique in each student,’ he once said. And connect he did – there have been tales of money handed to the students who were broke so that they could feed themselves until the next part-time pay cheque came in, others who said he encouraged each charge to find their own voice and was as generous with his time as he was with his wallet.
One said yesterday: ‘He was so generous with his intellect and so genuinely interested in other people’s work.’
That generosity extended, too, to the people he would meet on his daily Dublin rambles, often in the early hours as dawn broke, a man himself as real as the sun. Graham O’Sullivan’s cafe in between Dublin’s Duke and Dawson Street was a favourite haunt for the academic, so much so that it eventually made a ‘poet’s corner’ of Kennelly’s usual seat – a few steps up on a small landing where the sunlight hit at certain moments of the day.
Kennelly was not without his troubles either – his father’s branch into the pub trade began a relationship for a young Brendan with alcohol that almost ruined him and certainly ruined his marriage to the US poet Peggy O’Brien, with whom he had a daughter Kirsten, known as Doodle. They split when Doodle was 12 years old, due to Kennelly’s alcoholism.
He said in the past his descent began around the age of 27 until he sought treatment for his addiction in 1986, the year he turned 50.
Referring to himself as a ‘retired alcoholic’ a few years ago, he said he didn’t drink at all – as it wouldn’t allow him to do the things he loved. ‘I’ve tried to keep a really lively, intense mind in a sober, nondrinking person,’ he said in an interview. ‘If you drink, in my case you go to pieces. I can’t do it if I want to do my work; my writing, my teaching, my communicating. I can’t do it the way that I drink. I go off into another world.’
As a Professor Emeritus at Trinity, Kennelly lived on campus until a few years ago when he moved to a nursing home in Listowel, near the village where he grew up.
On his 85th birthday in April this year, he joined an online celebration as Trinity launched the Brendan Kennelly Literary Archive which also featured contributions from President Michael D. Higgins along with selected poems recited by celebrated singer, Bono and poet, Paula Meehan to name but two.
A few days later his only child Doodle died suddenly at her Dublin home at the age of 50.
Kennelly’s funeral Mass will be held in the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Ballylongford, tomorrow followed by burial in Lislaughtin Cemetery, Ballylongford.
Like Kennelly, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, who passed away on Satur
‘He was so generous with his intellect’
day, aged 99, was a groundbreaker in terms of the work she did – both in literature and her career.
An inspiring Irish-language poet, she paved the way for women’s voices to be heard in poetry, and also in their native tongue.
Born in Dublin, Mhac an tSaoi’s life and poetry were inextricably linked to the Gaeltacht area of Dún Chaoin where she spent most of her childhood summers, instilling a lifelong love of Gaeilge that saw her revolutionise the world of Irish poetry.
Described as one of the ‘most influential poets of the 20th century’ by President Higgins, Mhac an tSaoi was the daughter of former tánaiste Seán MacEntee, who helped found Fianna Fáil.
Her father was born in Belfast but fought in the 1916 Rising at the GPO in Dublin and went on to have a long ministerial career.
Mhac an tSaoi’s 2003 family memoir The Same Age As The State, include the story of how an on-the-run Éamon de Valera took refuge in the house of Mhac an tSaoi’s uncle Moss in Wicklow where she was sleeping as a child.
In the book she recounted that Dev took his place beside the sleeping infant so she later often joked then that she had ‘slept with de Valera’.
An excellent scholar, Mhac an tSaoi attended University College Dublin where she did a degree in Celtic studies and modern languages. It was there that she began to write Irish-language poems for the literary journal Comhár, edited by two of her friends, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh and Tomás de Bhaldraithe.
But her calling was to be manifold – following a three-year period of study at King’s Inns, where she was one of only two women students, Mhac an tSaoi was called to the Bar in 1944. During this period, she also studied in Paris and was to return after becoming the first female administrative officer to be recruited to the department of external affairs which was the start of an illustrious diplomatic career which only ended when she married Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Previously Mhac an tSaoi had embarked on an affair with a married Celtic studies scholar who was many years her senior – a torturous love story recounted in her poem Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin from her Margadh na Saoire collection which broke ground in terms of expressing feminine sexual desire and all the agony of love and loss.
‘The Irish-speaking world was where you could talk about things like bringing the stallion to the mare, but of course you couldn’t do that in middle-class convent English,’ she said in an interview in 2015.
While still entangled in this affair, Mhac an tSaoi met fellow diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien. They married in 1962 but their relationship caused a stir as Cruise O’Brien had previously been married to Christine Foster and had three children. His announcement of their forthcoming wedding at a press conference in the Congo came after their relationship was to be inadvertently exposed when they became accidental witnesses to a Belgian diplomatic incident.
The couple wed and set up home in Howth, Co. Dublin, and adopted two children, Patrick and Margaret, with whom Mhac an tSaoi lived until her death on Saturday.
Despite giving up her diplomatic job for her marriage, Mhac an tSaoi still campaigned for political causes, in one instance getting arrested in New York in 1967 for campaigning against the Vietnam War. When Dún Chaoin National school faced closure in the early 1970s, she was among those who campaigned for its survival, volunteering as a teacher.
But in her personal life, Mhac an tSaoi had a warmth that she extended to those around her.
Her groundbreaking work gave a voice to women in an era when they were facing barriers from both the Church and the State, while also opening doors for others, such as Nuala Ní Domhnaill and Rita Kelly,.
When asked if she believed in an afterlife six years ago, the then 93year-old insisted it was important to think there was somewhere else to be. ‘What else have I?’ she said. ‘It’s our culture. If it carries you through the unpleasant business of dying, who is going to jettison it?’
‘You couldn’t do it in middle-class convent English’