Review
A brilliantly told true tale, says Sean McMahon
- Patrick Kavanagh & the Leader: The Poet, The Politician and the Libel Trial
- Mercier Press
A Poet? Then, By Heaven, He Must Be Poor!
The name of Paddy Kavanagh may mean little nowadays except perhaps as the author of ‘A Christmas Childhood’, as the lyricist of Luke Kelly’s ballad, ‘On Raglan Road’ or the line from his poem ‘Shancoduff’ quoted above.
Yet he is one of the greatest of modern Irish poets up there with Yeats and Seamus-Famous. In the 1940s and 1950s he meteored across the Dublin sky at a time when his contemporaries Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan complained there were no personalities left.
To obviate such culpable ignorance Pat Walsh gives a swift, summary of ‘the story so far’ in his early chapters before brilliantly balancing text and newspaper excerpts to tell his tale. Kavanagh was perennially poor, thoroughly abrasive and ready to bite all hands that tried to feed him. With no carapace to ease the world’s buffets he used an anonymous profile in a Dublin magazine as a chance to ease his hurt and make a bit of money. The resulting trial in 1954 became the finest piece of theatre ‘the blind and ignorant town’ had experienced for years. The defence counsel John A Costello, (twice Taoiseach and declarer of the Irish republic) in spite of early put-downs wore the plaintiff down as remorselessly as Carson did Wilde yet helped him later find steady work. It makes you realise – Behan and O’Brien were right!
