Poet and writer Timothy Brendan Kennelly was born in 1936 in Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland. One of eight children of working-class parents, he spent many evenings in his father’s pub as a child, bantering and entertaining the clientele with songs. He attended St. Ita’s College, then Trinity College Dublin on scholarship. There, he studied English and French, captained Trinity Gaelic Football Club, and edited Icarus, the school literary magazine. He achieved first-class honors and went on to earn his PhD at Trinity.
Kennelly worked for the Electricity Supply Board before moving to the UK, where he spent a year at Leeds. He then returned to Trinity and worked his way up steadily through the academic ranks, beginning as a junior lecturer and becoming a professor of modern literature in 1973. He remained at Trinity until 2005. He married fellow academic Margaret O’Brien in 1969; the pair had a daughter, Kristen “Doodle” Kennelly, and eventually divorced.
Over his long career, Kennelly published more than 30 collections or poems. His poetry is known for its roots in everyday speech—eschewing the flowery and arcane in search of authentic language—and in Ireland’s traditions of storytelling, satire, and oral poetry. He drew from music, mythology, and history in his work, the latter perhaps most famously in his long poem sequence Cromwell (1983) and his epic poem of Judas and Jesus, The Book of Judas (1991). He wrote several plays, and his versions of Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women all saw performances in Dublin. He also authored two novels, wrote critical pieces, edited anthologies, adapted his works to be performed on stage, and translated poetry from the Irish. His honors include the Æ Memorial Prize for Poetry, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the American Ireland Fund Literary Award.
Kennelly was often in the public eye, from holding court in local pubs to appearing on national TV and radio, including The Late Late Show, and notoriously on a Toyota commercial. He was renowned for his melodious speaking voice and his ability to memorize and perform poems of all lengths, and he counted the members of U2 among his many friends. He was also a generous mentor to younger poets, including Michael Longley, Peter Fallon, and Paula Meehan. His former student and collaborator Katie Donovan described him as “a daring, visionary craftsman whose quicksilver eloquence encouraged so many [and who] wove his unique voice into the very fabric of Irish life.” He died in 2021.
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More Brendan Kennelly
Audio: Kennelly reads his poetry at the Poetry Archive
Text: Read poems by Kennelly at Wake Forest University Press' blog
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Photo courtesy of Bloodaxe Books.