In a commentary in his recent book, A Dublin Documentary, Thomas Kinsella says: "I am not, technically, a Dubliner, despite being born and reared in Inchicore. I am told for the full qualification three generations born in the city are needed. My children would qualify, if they wished; my parents were born in Dublin".
While this may be Kinsella's view, in granting Freedom of the City to the poet, Dublin City Council has given honour to a writer who is long overdue such recognition from a city that is close to his heart and central to his work. In A Dublin Documentary(O'Brien Press) Kinsella celebrates his native place and refers to his "second roots in Dublin" when he settled by the canal in Percy Place, which has been the source of several of his poems. Born in Inchicore in 1928, Kinsella spent 19 years in the Civil Service before leaving in 1965 to concentrate on writing and take up an academic career in the United States. He now divides his time between the Ireland and the US.
Kinsella's first book, Poems, appeared in 1956, followed by a series of Dolmen Press collections that won him wide acclaim, with critics noting the influence of WH Auden and acknowledging him as one of the finest Irish love poets of his time.
He later turned his attention to the translation of early Irish texts and a collaboration with artist Louis le Brocquy, who created a series of brush drawings, produced an edition of The Táin. His translation work continued with An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed.
Later collections of his own work, such as Notes from the Land of the Dead, signalled a departure from the Auden influence and a move away from the explorations of urban landscape of his earlier books to a more complex exploration of psyche. Art and politics have also been recurring themes throughout his work.
In 1972 he founded his own imprint, Peppercanister Poems- named after the Peppercanister church which was visible from his Percy Place home - with Butcher's Dozenas its inaugural publication. The poem, a personal response to the Widgery tribunal on the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry, kindled no small controversy.
In a recently published anthology, The Great Modern Poets, in which Kinsella is included, the editor Michael Schmidt makes the pertinent point that the poet "swims naturally and resolutely against the tides of fashion". This, perhaps, is the reason his work has not heretofore been as valued and feted as that by some of his contemporaries. Freedom of the City of Dublin should begin to rectify that neglect by bringing attention to a body of work that is among the most outstanding in contemporary Irish and international poetry.