Portrait of Patrick Kavanagh

Most of the first 35 years of Patrick Kavanagh's life were spent in the parish of Inniskeen and the countryside of County Monaghan. Kavanagh's formal education ended after national school and he became an apprentice shoemaker to his father. This was a short-lived career. Kavanagh worked on the small family farm for twenty years and while there, had his first work published.

In the radio documentary 'Gods Make Their Own Importance', Kavanagh's sisters and a neighbour talked to Tom McGurk about the poet's early days. Kavanagh finished school early but maintained an interest in reading through the books his sisters and brother used in their schooling.

For the 1966 television documentary, 'The Writers – Patrick Kavanagh', Kavanagh returned to his home place of Inniskeen. Kavanagh, from his own script for this programme, reads an extract from the novel 'Tarry Flynn' and visits the national school he attended at Kednaminsha.

"...And this is the house I was born in, and this is the lane down which Tarry Flynn rode his bicycle with his neighbour Eusebius Cassidy..."

Kavanagh reflects on the lines of his poem ' Inniskeen Road' as he walks along the road. He comments on his ambivalent relationship with his home place, and how the most exciting periods of his life were spent elsewhere. Kavanagh also describes here the three times in his life in which he experienced excitement in relation to his work.

"In one of my early poems I wrote of this road:

'A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king of banks and stones and every bloomin' thing.'

- a worthless kingdom indeed."

"...The trouble with me is that many of the most exciting periods of my life have been spent far from Inniskeen: in London, Paris, Rome and New York. This place of my youth was hardly ever home to me, except for a few years between the late twenties and early thirties..."

Neighbours tell Tom McGurk of how Patrick Kavanagh was often more interested in reading than farming and how the farm horse 'Oul Glug' "knew the way home better than he did."

"... And he was reading the paper behind the cart..."