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.
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