1936- ; b. Ballylongford, Co. Kerry; ed. St. Ita’s Coll, Tarbert, TCD, after stint as bus-conductor in London; and Leeds Univ. PhD on ‘Modern Irish Poets and the Irish Epic’; issued four pamphlet-books with Rudi Holzapfel; My Dark Fathers (1964); Selected Poems (1969); also The Crooked Cross (1963) and The Florentines (1967), novels; delivered oration at grave of Frank O’Connor, 1966, later characterising him as ‘Ireland’s Ezra Pound’ in his preface to The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970); visiting professor at Bernard Coll., NY, and Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania; appt. to TCD Chair of Modern English, 1973; worked on Mountjoy Prison teaching programme; his version of Antigone (Peacock Th., 1986), a ‘straight translation’ distilled from previous English versions and written in 1984, and which entered the Leaving Cert. syllabus in the 1990s; issued Cromwell (1983), a series of 160 poems on obsessive themes of Irish history with its Irish protagonist Buffún; Medea (RDS April 1988), inspired by womens stories overheard in a Dublin hospital in 1986; issued new selection including early poetry as A Time for Voices (1990); coined the term ‘Protholic Cothestant’ at Kavanagh’s Yearly, Monaghan, 1990; issued The Book of Judas (1991), as a sequel to Cromwell, continuing the same subversive strategy; wrote a play, The Trojan Women (Peacock 1993), directed at the Peacock Theatre by Lynne Parker with Pauline McLynn as Andromache, representing both the power of women and the male fear of that power; issued Poetry My Arse (1995), revolves around poet-persona called Ace de Homer and his partner Mary Jane of somewhat Yeatsian extraction; Blood Wedding (1996), after Frederico García Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre [1933], a verse play performed in England, Autumn 1996; advertised Toyota cars and financial services on television; successfully underwent triple by-pass surgery at the hands of Mr Nelligan, Oct. 1996; The Man Made of Rain (1998) is a longer poem, based on a vision experienced at the time; Äke Persson (Göteburg Univ.) hold tapes of his poetry readings, 1989-1996; a Brendan Kennelly Summer School was held inaugurally in Ballylongford on 9-12 Aug. 2001; retires from TCD, 2004. DIL OCIL
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Poetry collections
Cast A Cold Eye (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1959) and The Rain the Moon (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1961), both with Rudi Holzapfel; The Dark About Our Loves (John Augustine [1962]); Green Townlands (Leeds Univ. Bibl. Press 1963); My Dark Fathers (Dublin: New Square Publ. 1965); Let Fall No Burning Leaf ([q. pub.]1963); Up and At It (New Square Publ. 1965); Collection One, Getting Up Early (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1966); Good Souls to Survive (Dublin: Figgis 1967); Dream of a Black Fox (1968) [not listed DIL]; Selected Poems (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1971); A Drinking Cup, Poems from the Irish (Figgis 1970); ed., The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (Penguin 1970; 2nd ed. 1981); Bread ([Dublin:] Tara Telephone Publ. 1971), 30pp. [ltd. edn. 1000]; Love Cry (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1972), 48pp.; Salvation, the Stranger (Tara Telephone [Gallery] 1972), 46pp. [ltd. edn. 300]; The Voices: A Sequence (Oldcastle Gallery Press 1973); Shelley in Dublin (Dun Laoghaire: Anna Livia Press 1974); A Kind of Trust (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1975); New and Selected Poems, ed. Peter Fallon (Dublin; Gallery Press 1976), 63pp.; Islandman (Clondalkin: Profile Press 1977); The Visitor ([Dublin:] St Bueno’s Hand-Printed Lim. Edns. [1978]); In Spite of the Wives ([q. pub. 1979); A Small Light (Dublin: Gallery Press 1980), 54pp.; The Boats are Home (Dublin: Gallery Press 1980), 54pp.; The House that Jack Didn’t Build (1982); Cromwell ([Gallery] 1983; rep. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1986) [146pp.]; Moloney Up and At It (Cork: Mercier Press 1984), 67pp., ill. John Verling, and Do. [rep. edn.] (Cork: Mercier 1995), 88pp., [comic collection in oral tradition]; Love of Ireland, poems from the Irish (1989); Book of Judas: A Poem (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1991); Ed. Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970). A play, and Collected Poems (?1989); also A Time for Voices: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1990); Breathing Spaces: Early Poems (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press; Chester Springs: Dufour 1993) [revised & rewritten]; Poetry My Arse: A Riotous Epic (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1995); The Man Made of Rain (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1998), 96pp. [longer poem]; Begin (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1999), 112pp.; Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 2004), 496pp.
Plays
Medea [performed RDS 1988] (1989); Brendan Kennelly, Euripides’ Medea, a new version (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1991), 75pp.; Euripides’ The Trojan Women (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1993), 80pp.; The Trojan Women-a new version [Peacock, June 1993] (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1993); Sophocles’ Antigone: A New Version (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1996), 63pp. with notes by Terence Brown and Kathleen McCracken; Brendan Kennelly, Blood Wedding, after Frederico García Lorca (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1996), 79pp.
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Miscellaneous
Ed. & intro, Penguin Book of Irish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970, rev. 1990); ‘An Béal Bocht’, in John Jordan, ed., The Pleasures of Gaelic Literature (Cork: Mercier 1977), pp.8[?]-96; ed., Ireland, Past and Present (1985; rev. ed. 1992); intro. Landmarks of Irish Drama (London: Methuen 1988); ed. with A. N. Jeffares, Joycechoyce, the poems in verse and prose of James Joyce (London: Roberts Rinehart 1992), 280pp.[complete Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach with some other poems and unpublished pieces, and passages of prose regarded as poems by eds.]; with Gearoid Ó Tuathaigh et al., Ireland, Past and Present (London: Prion 1992), ill.; ed., Between Innocence and Peace, favourite poems of Ireland (Cork: Mercier 1993), 196pp.; with Katie Donovan and A. Norman Jeffares, Ireland’s Women, Writings Past and Present (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), and ed., with Katie Donovan, Dublines: An Anthology of Writing About Dublin (1995), 576pp. [var. Dublin, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1996, 320pp.]
Also, ‘Modern Writing’, in Encyclopaedia of Ireland (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1968), pp.359-61; infra]; ‘Martin’s Progress’, review of Lead Us Not Into Temptation, in The Irish Times (7 Oct. 1978); Keynote Address to Cultures of Ireland Group, 27-28 Sept. 1991, in Edna Longley, ed., Culture in Ireland, Division or Diversity? (QUB 1991), pp.19-27 contrib. short piece in ‘The State of Poetry’ special issue, Gerald Dawe and Jonathan Williams, eds., Krino (Winter 1993), pp.28-29, with poem, ‘There Came a Pleasant Rain’; Ake Persson, ed., Journey Into Joy (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1994), 288pp [essays on Yeats, Joyce, O’Casey, MacNeice, Clarke, O’Connor, O’Brien, O’Flaherty].
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Articles and Papers
Brendan Kennelly, ‘Patrick Kavanagh’, in Ariel (July 1970), pp.7-28; ‘The Poetry of Joseph Plunkett’, Dublin Magazine (Spring 1966), pp.56-65; also a short poem on Joseph Mary Plunkett’s marriage to Grace Gifford, ibid., p.35; reviews of Seamus Heaney, Eleven Poems, and Michael Longley, Ten Poems [both QUB Festive Publ.]; ‘Poetry and Violence’, in Joris Duytschaever and Geert Lernout, eds., History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature [Costerus Ser., ed. C. C. Barfoot, et al. Vol. 71; Conference of 9 April 1986] (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988), pp.5-28.
Audio-cassettes
with Paul Durcan, Brendan Michael Longley, and Medbh McGuckian, The Poetry Quartets: 4 (Newcastle: Bloodaxe/ British Council 1999), 113 mins. [talking about their poetry]
Fiction
The Crooked Cross (Dublin: Alan Figgis 1963), 144pp.; The Florentines (Figgis 1967)
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Bibliographical details
The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970; eds.), 428pp.; Introduction; biographical notices; Pt. I, Gaelic translated; several anonymous interspersed, trans. by Kuno Meyer; Kennelly and Frank O’Connor, and James Carney; Frank O’Connor [22 incl. The Viking Terror, Blackbird by Belfast Lough, Oisin, Caoilte, Old Woman of Beare]; Eagan O’Rahilly [4 incl. Brightness of Brightness]; James Carney; Eileen O’Lear; Anthony Raftery; Bryan Merriman. Pt. II, Anglo-Irish, Jonathan Swift; Oliver Goldsmith; John Philpot Curran; William Drennan; Richard Alfred Milliken; Thomas Moore; Sir Aubrey de Vere; Charles Wolfe; Jeremiah Joseph Callanan; George Darley; Eugene O’Curry [Do You Remember That Night]; James Clarence Mangan [Dark Rosaleen, O’Hussey’s Ode to the Maguire, Woman of Three Cows, Gone in the Wind, And Then No More, Lover’s Farewell, Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century, The Nameless One, Siberia, Lament for the Princes of Tir-Owen and Tirconnell, Shapes and Signs, Kinkora, To Joseph Brenan, The One Mystery, To the Ingleezee Khafir, calling himself Djaun Bool Djnkinzun, time of the Barmecides, Twenty Golden years Ago]; anon., The Night that Larry was Stretched; Gerald Griffin [Aileen Aroon]; Francis Sylvester Mahoney; Edward Walsh [only Dawning of the Day]; George Fox; Samuel Ferguson [Burial of King Cormac, Cashel of Munster, Cean Dubh Deelish, Fair Hills of Ireland, Fairy Thorn, Deirdre’s Lament of the Sons of Uisnech, Lark in the Clear Air, Lament for the Death of Thomas Davis, Vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley]; aubrey de Vere; Thomas Davis [only Lament for the Death of Eaoghan ruadh O’Neill]; William McBurney [The Croppy Boy]; Arthur G. Geoghegan [After Aughrim]; Lady Wilde [The Famine Years]; John Kells Ingram [Memory of the Dead]; Michael Joseph McCann [O’Donnell Abu]; Thomas Caulfield Irwin [four sonnets]; William Allingham; Thomas D’Arcy McGee [The Celts]; John Todhunter; Edward Dowden; John Boyle O’Reilly; Arthur O’Shaugnessy; Emily Lawless; Alfred Percival Graves; William Larminie; John Keegan Casey; Fanny Parnell; Oscar Wilde; T. W. Rolleston; John Synge; Thomas MacDonagh; Patrick Pearse [I am Ireland, Renunciation, The Mother, The Fool, The Rebel, Christmas 1915]; Joseph Plunkett; Francis Ledwidge [Wife of Lew, June, The Coming Poet, Thomas MacDonagh, The Blackbirds, Ireland]. Pt. III, Yeats and After, W. B. Yeats [only To Ireland in the Coming tims, Sept. 1913, The Statues]; George Russell [only On Behalf of Some Irishmen Not followers of Tradition]; Oliver St John Gogarty; Seamus O’Sullivan; Padraic Colum; James Joyce [Gas from a Burner]; James Stephens [A Glass of Beer]; Austin Clarke; Monk Gibbon; F. R. Higgins [Father and son];; R. N. D. Wilson [Enemies]; Patrick MacDonogh [The Widow of Drynam]; Ewart Milne [Ballad of An Orphan]; C. Day Lewis [remembering Con Markievicz; Padraic Fallon [Field Observation]; Bryan Guinness; Patrick Kavanagh; Samuel Beckett [Poem]; John Hewitt [The Glens]; Louis MacNeice [Valediction]; Denis Devlin [The Colours of Love]; Robert Farren [The Mason]; W. R. Rodgers [The Net, Home Thoughts from Abroad]; W. B. Stanford; Donagh MacDonagh; Sigerson Clifford [Ballad of the Tinker’s Wife]; Valentine Iremonger [Icarus]; Kevin Faller; Roy McFadden; Padraic Fiacc; Anthony Cronin [For a Father]; Jerome Kiely [Lizard]; Eugene R. Watters [from Weekend of Dermot and Grace]; Pearse Hutchinson [Look, No Hands];Richard Kell; Richard Murphy [The Poet f th Island]; John B. Keane; Ulick O’Connor [Oscar Wilde]; Basil Payne; Thomas Kinsella* [Downstream II]; John Montague; Sean Lucy; Richard Weber; James Simmons [Art and Reality]; James Liddy [In Memory of Bernard Berenson; Rivers Carew [Catching Trout]; James McAuley [Stella]; Desmond O’Grady [Homecoming]; Kennelly [My Dark Fathers]; Rudi Holzapfel [The Employee]; Seamus Heaney [At a Potato Digging]; Timothy Brownlow [Leaving Inishmore; Michael Hartnett [Mo Grá Thu]; Derek Mahon [In Carrowdore Churchyard]; Eilean ni Chuilleanáin; Eaven Boland [New Territory]; Tom McGurk [Big Ned]. Acknowledgements and index of titles and first lines.
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Landmarks of Irish Drama, introduced by Brendan Kennelly (Methuen 1988), CONTENTS, Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island; Synge, Playboy; W B Yeats, On Baile’s Strand; O’Casey, The Silver Tassie; Denis Johnston, The Old Lady Says “No!”; Beckett, All That Fall; Behan, The Quare Fellow [appendix includes 1 page of Gaelic version]; Introduction, vii-xliv. Bibl. incls. Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (1973 edn.); O’Casey, Autobiography, espec. Inisfallen (1940); Nicky Grene, Shaw, A Critical View (1984); Peter Ure, Yeats the Playwright (1963); Nicky Grene, Synge, A Critical Study of the Plays (1975); James Simmons, Sean O’Casey (1983); Joseph Ronsley, [ed.,] Denis Johnston, A Retrospective (1981).
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Ake Persson, ed., Journey into Joy: Selected Prose (Newcastle: Bloodaxe 1994), 271pp.; Contents: Kennelly, Preface [9]; Persson, Introduction [11]; Poetry and Violence [23]; A View of Irish Poetry, 1. Irish Poetry to Yeats [46]; 2. Irish Poetry Since Yeats [55]; A View of Irish Drama [72]; The Poetry of Joseph Plunkett [103]; Patrick Kavanagh's Comic Vision [109]; Derek Mahon's Humane Perspective [127]; Louis MacNeice: An Irish Outsider [136]; George Moore's Lonely Voices: A Study of his Short Stories [145]; The Heroic Ideal in Yeats's Cuchulain Plays [162]; Austin Clarke and the Epic Poem [170]; Satire in Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth [182]; The Little Monasteries: Frank O'Connor as a Poet [198]; Seán O'Casey's Journey into Joyce [209]; James Joyce's Humanism [217]; W. B. Yeats: An Experiment in Living [231]. Editor's Note, 248; Notes, 249; Acknowledgements, 265; Index, 266.
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Gerard Quinn, ‘Brendan Kennelly, Victors and Victims’, in The Irish Review, 9 Autumn 1990, pp.44-54.
Richard Pine, ed., Dark Fathers into Light: Brendan Kennelly [Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies 2] (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe; Chester Springs: Dufour 1994) [nine essays].
Kathleen McCracken, Rage for a New Order, Brendan Kennelly’s Greek Plays for Women (Bloodaxe Books 1994) [as cited in CAIS Bibl. 1995].
Edna Longley, ‘Poetic Forms and Social Malformations’, in The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1994, pp.197-226.
Gerald Dawe, ‘Breathing Spaces: Brendan Kennelly’, in Against Piety: Essays in Irish Poetry (Belfast: Lagan Press 1995), pp.145-52.
Richard Pine, ed., Dark Fathers into Light, Brendan Kennelly (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press 1994) [infra].
John McDonagh, ‘“Blitzophrenia”: Brendan Kennelly’s Post-Colonial Vision’, in Irish University Review (Autumn/Winter 2003), pp.322-36 [infra].
John McDonagh, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts (Dublin: Liffey Press 2004), 170pp.
Marianne McDonald, & J. Michael Walton, eds., Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, intro. by Declan Kiberd (London: Methuen 2002), 302pp.
Note also, Melissa Sihra (Lecturer in Drama, Queen's University Belfast), completed a PhD thesis at Marina Carr at TCD, and most worked with Carr and Conall Morrison (Ass. Dir., Abbey Th.) on Carr’s Ariel.
Terence Brown, ‘British Ireland’, in Edna Longley, ed., Culture in Ireland, Diversity or Division (QUB/ISS 1991), pp.72-83.
Geert Lernout, ed., The Crows Behind the Plough: History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Poetry and Drama (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1991).
Richard Pine, review of Brendan Kennelly, The Book of Judas, in Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 1992.
Patrick O’Sullivan, review og Journey Into Joy, Selected prose, ed., Ake Persson (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe), 271pp., and Richard Pine, ed., Dark Fathers Into Light (Bloodaxe ?1993), 224pp, in Times Literary Supplement, 16 Dec. 1994.
Alan Titley, review of Poetry My Arse (Bloodaxe 1995), noticed by in Books Ireland (Nov. 1995), p.304.
Tom Herron [Aberdeen], Poetry My Arse (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1995), in Irish Studies Review (Spring 1996), pp.53-54.
Des O’Rawe, review of Antigone, with Derek Mahon’s Phaedra (1996), in Irish Review, Winter/Spring 1997).
David Butler, ‘ A jester of barbed jibes’, review of Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (Bloodaxe), and John McDonagh, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts (Liffey Press, 170pp., in The Irish Times (25 June 2004) [Weekend].
John McDonagh, ‘“Blitzophrenia”: Brendan Kennelly’s Post-Colonial Vision’, in Irish University Review, (Autumn/Winter 2003), pp.322-36.
Online sites: Lynn McBrien [interview], CCN Student News ( January 2, 2001 ) [link]
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Peter Fallon and Seán Golden, ed, Soft Day, a Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing (Dublin: Wolfhound Press; Notree Dame UP 1980), selects ‘The Thatcher’; ‘The Swimmer; ‘Bread’; ‘Proof’.
‘River of Words’, RTE Wed. 26 June 1994, ‘Brendan Kennelly’ [ Previous two numbers dealt with George Fitzmaurice and J. B. Keane].
Cromwell: Seamus Heaney has written of ‘a male cult whose founding fathers were Cromwell, William of Orange, and Edward Carson’, and whose godhead is figuratively Roman, “incarnate in a rex or caesar resident in a place in London”’ (Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1980, p.57; cited in Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘British Romans and Irish Carthaginians: Anticolonial Metaphor in Heaney, Friel and McGuinness, PMLA, March 1996, pp.222-36, p.229.
Irish epic: Brendan Kennelly called Michael Farrell’s novel Thy Tears Might Cease (1963) the first Irish novel of epic stature since Ulysses in a (Hermathena review (XCIX, Autumn 1964) [See further under Farrell, infra].
Head-boy: The Brendan Kennelly Summer School was held inaugurally on 9-12 Aug. 2001 in Ballylongford with guests incl. Desmond Fitzgerald (Knight of Glin), Theo Dorgan, Miriam Purtill, and John McDonagh; email.
Toyota-town: Bob Quinn, Maverick: A Dissident View of Broadcasting (2001), writes: ‘Even allowing for the possible geriatrification of my taste buds, I could not see how on every conceivable occasion the offer of, say, a free t-shirt made of recycled Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to everyone in the [Late Late Show] audience was contributing ore than a sick joke to the gaiety of the nation. Nor could I see how giving a free, show-long promotion to a Toyota car so that somebody could drive it away buckshee and total it on a stone wall in Ballyjamesduff made good economic sense, even if the vehicle was endorsed by a poet.’ (Aubrey Dillon-Malone, review, Books Ireland, Dec. 2001, p.328.)
Judas (the play): Stage version of The Book of Judas preparted for Theatre Unlimited by Maciek Resczcynski; produced at Kilkenny Arts Fest., with Adrian Dunbar as Jesus, and Phelim Drew as Judas. Resczcynski previously dramatised Cromwell for Kavanagh’s Yearly gathering at Carrickmacross, and later at Trinity College, Dublin, GMB, transferring to Damer Hall and onwards to Bush Th., London; Resczcynski worked with Contemporary Theatre Co. of Wroclaw, which brought Birthrate to the Dublin Th. Fest. in 1982 and returned the year after with its production of Finnegans Wake; Resczcynski m. Dáire Brehan, prev. of DU Players; set up Theatre Unlimited in Kilkenny; has played Tom McIntyre such as Dance for Your Daddy; now lives in England as computer-whizz for BBC; Judas perf. Kilkenny Arts Fest., 12-20 Aug. 2000 (Report in Irish Times, 5 Aug. 2000.)
Michael Hartnett: Kennelly is the dedicand of Michael Hartnett's “Farewell of English” (1975), Collected Poems (Gallery 2003), pp.141-47.
The Ireland Fund of France presented its “Wild Geese Trophy 2003” to Brendan Kennelly at a gala dinner which he attended as guest of honour.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)