Gut Yer Man

In the week of the centenary of the birth of Patrick Kavanagh, this is an exploration of his work and relationship with the GAA, told partly through the medium of his famous essay, Gut Yer Man.

It first appeared in the monthly literary magazine Envoy in 1950. and was an evocation of his past in Inniskeen - steeped in the GAA and Gaelic Football in particular. What emerges from this short essay is a fragmentary experience - it has something of the quality of overheard conversation. He comments that 'all sporting subjects are superficial. The emotion is a momentary puff of gas.' and says he knows why he never wrote about it.

But he then relates a game his brother came across in San Francisco, 'Not a man of them had ever left home and the mysterious Pacific was just a bog hole, gurgling with eels and
frogs. Yet, there was something queer and wonderful about the sight and thought.'

The radio programme Gut Yer Man will include archive material and commentary from the writer and broadcaster John McArdle. It looks at the role of Gaelic Football in Kavanagh's work - both its place and absence. It examines Monaghan GAA in particular - including the place-names and parishes that contributed to the notion of 'the local' that was central to Kavanagh's work.

Gut Yer Man is produced by Peter Woods - who is also from Monaghan.