Patrick Kavanagh Biography

Patrick Kavanagh was born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, on 21 October, 1904.  His father was a cobbler and farmer and grew up in the shadow of the "hungry hills" of Ulster.  Kavanagh left school intending to follow in his father's footsteps but turned his back on farming.  "I dabbled in verse, and it became my life."
     Much of his poetry is autobiographical; the earlier poems written about the life of rural Ireland which he left at thirty, when he walked from Monaghan to Dublin (a considerable distance).  In 1936 his first volume of poems, "Ploughman and Other Poems", was published.  His later verse took inspiration from the city life of Dublin, where he befriended John Beteman, another famous poet.  His poetry never made him a lot of money, but Kavanagh did not care.  "I am a very lazy man."
    He died in 1967 and was buried in Inniskeen.  In Dublin, his beloved second home, he was immortalized according to his wishes:  "O commemorate me with no hero-courageous/ Tomb -- just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by."

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