An Irishman's Diary

I SEE THAT among the talks at this year’s Patrick Kavanagh Weekend, which starts tomorrow, is one by Peter McDonnell entitled: “The story of an editor who was corrupted by love”. The subject is Kavanagh’s Weekly: an extraordinary if short-lived newspaper produced by the poet and his brother in 1952. And the talk title is taken from the headline on the paper’s final issue, as it closed after a 13-week reign of terror.

Like many journals before and since, it had run out of money (Peter Kavanagh’s, in this case). But at least according to its own account, it was nothing so vulgar as a lack of commercial success that doomed it. On the contrary, as the farewell editorial pointed out: “Our circulation was remarkably large and rising: last week we sold out.” No, the main problem – or a big part of it – according to the article, was the insufficient quality of the audience. Readers had not risen to the challenge of a journal of ideas, it complained. And indeed, the public’s lack of engagement had only added to the strain of producing a weekly newspaper with no staff. Among other things, the brothers had needed to write the Letters to the Editor themselves.

Kavanagh’s Weekly was famously controversial while it lasted. A review of the opening issue claimed “it hit the town last Saturday like a blast from a sawn-off shotgun” and added “its aim appears to be to annoy as many people as possible”. Yet in certain respects, re-read now in the IMF-managed Ireland of 2010, that first issue holds up well.

Its opening editorial, for example – headlined “Victory of Mediocrity” – was a broadside against the performance of successive governments in the 30 years since the Republic won “what was called freedom”. This was followed immediately by a diatribe about the main news story of the week: the budget.

Here, the Kavanaghs cut loose on their real bête noire, Fianna Fáil, which they said still posed as a popular movement while in reality being “the party of the bankers, the capitalists, the new feudalism”. Even the most deluded romantics, they suggested, should now be asking themselves: “who ruled this country – the government or a conclave of bankers in Foster Place, very often under the directives of the British treasury”.

The editorial concluded: “Mr McEntee’s budget is not the budget of a free people; it is not even the budget of a free English people; it is the budget of Churchill’s Tory government”.

Strong stuff, and not entirely out of date, even now. Ireland’s link with sterling is long gone and so is Churchill. But another Tory government is preparing to lend us emergency funds: less out of the kindness of its heart than from enlightened self-interest. Meanwhile, applied to 2010 rather than 1952, the hyperbole about feudalism and the budgets of unfree people sounds quite apt, if a bit mild for current circumstances.

Mind you, while railing against the budget, Kavanagh’s Weekly also favoured a programme of drastic public sector reform. An editorial in the third issue called for the civil service to be shrunk by 90 per cent, the Army to be reduced to 500 soldiers; and the presidency to be downscaled to a part-time role, with matching salary. Even in IMF Ireland, such ideas may still be ahead of their time.

In any case, the talk on Kavanagh’s Weekly is at 2pm Saturday in Inniskeen. Elsewhere, as usual, the emphasis will be mostly on poetry, with a keynote address by Eileen Battersby, a performance of

The Great Hunger by Peter Duffy, and an interview with Rita-Ann Higgins, among other highlights. The full programme is at www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com

KAVANAGH’S late-career poem Thank You, Thank You could well be the theme for another initiative beginning tomorrow: the first-ever “National Thank You Day”.

Organised by the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF), the event is timed to coincide with Thanksgiving in the US and its stated aim is to encourage feelings of gratitude and their articulation, a habit that – apparently – can be good for you. According to the IHF, “scientific research has shown that people who express their gratitude daily are 25 per cent happier and significantly healthier than those who don’t”.

But of course there is also a fund-raising aspect to the day, via the IHF’s thank you cards, now on sale, and a related book featuring contributions from such luminaries as Maeve Binchy, Martin Sheen, and Seamus Heaney. More details are at www.thankyouproject.ie

This is not perhaps the most auspicious year to inaugurate a national day devoted to gratitude. In fact, I’m tempted to suggest that in the interest of sales, the public should be encouraged to extend their use of the cards to include ironic or sarcastic thanks. You could send one to the IMF, say, or to the former board of Anglo-Irish Bank. This might not be strictly in the spirit of the IHF’s initiative. But I suspect it could be just as good for your health, and the cause would still benefit.