BRENDAN KENNELLY: The poet, novelist and academic is remembered by Sheila O’Kelly on the anniversary of his death

 

Brendan Kennelly was born in Ballylongford, County Kerry on the 17th April, 1936 to Timothy and Bridie Kennelly. Brendan had seven siblings and was educated at the local national school. He later attended Saint Ita’s Secondary School in Tarbert in Kerry.

He played on junior and minor football teams, and played for Kerry against Dublin in an All-Ireland minor football final in 1954. Brendan came to love literature and his teacher at Saint Ita’s secondary school encouraged him to apply to Trinity College, Dublin, for the Reid Scholarship.

The Reid Scholarship arose from a large amount of money bequeathed to Trinity College in 1888 by Richard Touhill Reid, a lawyer from County Kerry, and was available only to students from County Kerry with limited means. Kennelly won the scholarship.

In 1950s Ireland, Catholics were banned from attending Trinity College. Brendan sought dispensation from Bishop Denis J Moynihan, Bishop of Kerry at the time. Dispensation was granted and in 1953 seventeen year-old Brendan studied English and French in Trinity.

He then worked for a time for Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board. He returned to Trinity College in 1957 and completed a post-graduate course. During his time there, he became friends with Rudi Holzapfel, a post-graduate student in Trinity. Together they produced their poetry collection titled ‘Cast a Cold Eye’ published in 1959. Brendan was editor of Icarus, the university’s literary magazine, and captained the Trinity Gaelic Football Club.

He graduated from college in 1961. He went to London and was a bus conductor before studying for a year at Leeds University. He returned to Ireland in 1963 and commenced working as a junior lecturer in Trinity. His first novel, The Crooked Cross’ was published the same year.

Brendan’s approach to English and his love of poetry earned him the adoration of his students. He obtained a Doctorate of Philosophy in English Literature in 1966 for his thesis on Modern Irish Poetry and on the Irish Epic – Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley).

The following year, his second novel, ‘The Florentines’, was published. He was popular with people he regularly encountered and observed in Dublin – people living on the streets and people he met in public houses and coffee shops. In 1969, he married American poet and academic Margaret (Peggy) O’Brien. They resided in Sandymount, Dublin and together had one child, their daughter Kristen also known as ‘Doodle’.

In 1973, Brendan was appointed Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College. By the 1980s, Kennelly’s reputation as a poet was well established in Ireland and abroad. Despite his life being dogged by alcoholism, Brendan became a teetotaler in 1985. He attributed his over indulgence in alcohol to the breakup of his marriage that ended in divorce two years later.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own