The centenary of Patrick Kavanagh\"s birth in 2004 provides the ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland\"s greatest poets....

\"I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided...\" By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece \"The Great Hunger\", some of the key poems by the writer who transformed Anglo-Irish verse....

My part of Ireland had a poet at one time, a poor ragged fellow whom no respectable person whom no respectable person would be seen talking to, but he left doors open as he passed....

He did not ask things to have a meaning or to tell a story. To be was the only story A semi-autobiographical novel from the author of The Green Fool and The Great Hunger A man\"s mother can be a terrible burden sometimes....