An Irishman's Diary

ANOTHER Patrick Kavanagh Weekend looms, and still there is no sign of a resolution to the sad stand-off that surrounds the poet…

ANOTHER Patrick Kavanagh Weekend looms, and still there is no sign of a resolution to the sad stand-off that surrounds the poet’s grave, condemning the two people he was most intimately connected with to posthumous anonymity.

It’s a love triangle, Irish style. On one side is the poet’s brother Peter, who supported him morally and financially all his writing life. On the other is his wife Katherine, the companion of Kavanagh’s later years, whom he married shortly before his death.

Peter and Katherine had little in common while they lived, except their devotion to Patrick. These days they share another distinction, one that neither would have welcomed. For several years now, they have had no identifying markers on their graves.

There’s a melancholy twist here to the old joke about the Irish marriage proposal: “How would you like to be buried with my people?” And the trouble did indeed begin with the wedding, back in 1967.

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Patrick apparently didn’t think to mention the event in letters to Peter, by then an academic working and living in the US; even though one consequence was that when the poet died later the same year, Katherine inherited the literary estate, such as it was.

Not that she would ever grow rich from this honour. As Peter knew to his cost, Kavanagh’s work was not a very profitable concern. Even so, it was a bitter blow to find himself supplanted and he never accepted the new dispensation.

When Katherine died in 1989, and her family added a handsome headstone in her memory to the Kavanagh grave in Inniskeen, Peter protested by withdrawing the wooden cross previously erected to his brother, and for years displayed it instead at the family homestead.

Then in 1998, he went further, infamously removing and destroying Katherine’s memorial, after which he reinstated Patrick’s cross to its original location. Since when, there has been no mention of the poet’s wife on the grave the couple share.

Peter Kavanagh mellowed only slightly with age. I was in Inniskeen in 2006 when he finally made peace the Kavanagh Centre, which is housed in the former Catholic church whose cemetery was the scene of the crime.

The centre had suffered collateral damage during his epic dispute with the estate over copyright and he had never visited it until this day, when he agreed to share reminiscences with an audience.

He was a very old man then and although befogged by memory lapses, his residual feistiness occasionally burned through. But, while he didn’t mention Patrick’s wife, he did bury one or two hatchets. And when he was himself buried, a few months later, there was hope that a wrong could now be righted and that Katherine’s name might be in some way restored to her grave.

Instead of which, what happened, soon afterwards, was that some person or persons unknown extracted a biblical revenge on Peter by removing the name-plate from the cross marking his resting place. And there, in mutual obscurity, the relationship between the poet’s wife and brother now stands.

The situation suggests an ironic answer to a question that, I see from the fliers, will feature at this year’s Kavanagh Weekend, which starts on September 28th. To wit, in his keynote address, Micheal O’Siadhail will ask how seriously we should take Kavanagh’s grand claim that a poet should perform the role of “prophet and saviour”.

There is certainly a hint of Calvary in the arrangement whereby Patrick Kavanagh, a devout Catholic, finds himself flanked in death by two unnamed figures (actually Peter’s grave is separate from his, a short distance away). He was perhaps lucky he didn’t have to choose which of them would accompany him to Paradise.

But grim jokes aside, the impasse is a cause of sadness and some embarrassment for locals and for the Kavanagh enthusiasts who will be gathering at the centre again next week. Essentially, this is a private matter that only the parties’ descendants on both sides of the Atlantic can solve. Yet there is also an element of public interest in, if not ownership, of the problem.

The Kavanagh Weekend – now an early-autumn fixture after many years braving the dark days of late November – will have the usual eclectic mixture of events, ranging from O'Siadhail's address to a concert by Jimmy Crowley. There will be tours of Kavanagh Country, a talk on "mindfulness", and a discussion on the famous libel trial, one of the other great controversies of Kavanagh's life (full details at patrickkavanaghcountry.com) In addition, however, the weekend will as always include that staple of literary, musical, and political events: the graveside commemoration. Which should be focused – like the wooden cross memorial – mainly on the poet. And it usually is. But of late it has also been inviting reflection on the fate of those who lie alongside Kavanagh, in the tombs of the unknown soldiers.