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DEAR ALUMNI December is always a wonderful month in college, with carols, the Christmas tree and the alumni homecoming. Given the evolving situation with the pandemic, we’ve moved several events we had hoped to do on campus online. If you missed the live streaming of the Carols on 2 December, do listen back online – the choir sounds just as beautiful as ever. We will continue to livestream this much-loved event in the future so that many graduates and friends around the world can enjoy the sounds of Trinity at this special time of the year. I’m delighted to present the winter issue of Trinity Today, which we’re now publishing seasonally. I hope you will enjoy the mix of heritage and history with 21st century innovation and research. On the one hand, the Trinity graduate who was the first woman in Ireland and Britain to be called to the Bar and Trinity Tales from the Noughties (though that’s hardly history!) and, on the other, Kingston and Evanna Mills’ ground-breaking immunology research and those graduates who, in their different spheres, are using technology to improve our way of being in the world. A special word too for Gerard Dawe’s really beautiful tribute to Brendan Kennelly. Christmas is a time for giving as well as celebration, and January a time for resolutions and planning the year ahead. Unfortunately, the economic uncertainty occasioned by the pandemic and repeated lockdowns is continuing to impact our students, with Trinity Access students particularly affected. Excluding tuition, the average cost of living for a student in Ireland is €12,000 - well beyond the means of our Trinity Access students, who come from disadvantaged communities and are often the first in their families to attend university. Trinity Access provides scholarships from €1,000 to €2,500 to help pay for rent, travel, textbooks and equipment. These essential scholarships are made possible by the generosity of Trinity alumni and friends like you. I’m asking you to please consider a year-end gift to Trinity Access of €250 to help transform the life of a student who would otherwise struggle to stay in college. If you can make a gift to this hugely important project, please click here to support. Thank you for strengthening our college community and for supporting our students to transform their own lives and contribute to a better future for all. Happy reading everyone, thank you for staying in touch and for your support throughout the year. Wishing you and your families a happy holiday season and an inspiring New Year. Warmest regards, Kate Bond Director of Advancement Trinity Development & Alumni
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The full story has been told Professor Gerald Dawe remembers Brendan Kennelly (1936 -2021) , one of Ireland’s most popular poets and former Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity I n an uncharacteristic moment of decisiveness, I made up my mind the other day to sort out years of files and cuttings and books which had – almost unbeknownst to myself – amassed themselves since my retirement. Now the towers of material threatened to engulf the modest workroom in the garden, our family ‘retreat’ and makeshift office during the height of the dire COVID-days. Sitting amongst the piles of books, box-files and the odds and ends of an academic life brought images back to me of visiting the famous office of Brendan Kennelly in the Arts Building in Trinity. He had the look of a smiling buddha who had somehow surfaced in this corner room of a modernist building, lit on two sides by daylight which flooded in and illuminated the sheer and amazing volume of his public and personal life as one of Ireland’s most cherished poets and teachers. Books there were aplenty, editions going back in time, well-used teaching ‘texts’, volumes of gifted poetry, and the bric-a-brac of photographs, tokens of affection from an audience that always seemed instinctively aware of what Brendan Kennelly was doing and saying as a poet. They ‘got’ him. Be that in the darker moody introspections or his wild playful mockeries, the poetry of Brendan Kennelly entertained local audiences like no other. And the same with his hugely engaging lectures. Unlike many other institutions in the UK or North America, this holder of a personal Chair in Modern Literature at Trinity taught daily and across the full range of undergraduate and graduate courses and evening lectures and carried all the allied responsibilities for which junior staff, myself included, treasured him.
