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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Rory Carroll in Dublin

‘Bitter, gentle, funny’: Irish stars unite to celebrate overlooked poet Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh walking in a field in Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan, in 1963.
Patrick Kavanagh in Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, in 1963. Photograph: The Wiltshire Photographic Collection/National Library of Ireland

Patrick Kavanagh is one of Ireland’s most revered poets – a genius from a rural backwater who made the parochial universal. Yet his fame never really reached other shores.

While William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney won Nobel prizes and were quoted by US presidents, acclaim for Kavanagh remained largely confined to his homeland.

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