North Tipperary Author celebrates Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh
Toomevara writer Brendan Lynch will join Irish Independent critic Emer O’Kelly in next week’s (Sept 10) annual commemoration of the poet Patrick Kavanagh at Buswell’s Hotel in Dublin..
Organiser Peter McDonnell confirmed; ’Brendan spoke for us before on Kavanagh and the Dublin of the poet’s time. Now, following his three books on literary Dublin, including the recently-launchedCity of Writers, he will expand on Dublin’s huge role in world literature.’
The North Tipp writer also launched this year’s autumn lectures at the James Joyce Cultural Centre last Monday (Sept 2), when he spoke on James Joyce and the 1903 Gordon Bennett motor race. Joyce devoted a Dubliners story to the event, about which Lynch wrote the recently reissued book,Triumph of the Red Devil.
Brendan Lynch paid his own tribute to the late Seamus Heaney at the Joyce lecture; ‘Seamus Heaney was to poetry what Joyce was to prose. He represented the heart and the humour and the history of our small island. He was a real patriot, unlike the gunmen, conmen and corrupt politicians who have disgraced our country in recent years.
‘He contributed to a book I wrote on literary Dublin. And when illness prevented him helping with a later volume, he sent a gracious note, which was among the letters I displayed at a recent Nenagh Heritage exhibition. Seamus Heaney’s death has caused sadness. But, like Joyce, we should celebrate that he left such a rare legacy which has so enriched our lives and our reputation across the globe.’
