‘Desmond Kavanagh’s poems are full of the names of people and places he knows or has known well.
Names are great familiarisers and Kavanagh’s Ireland is a close and familiar place. But it also bears within it the ache of absence, not just for specific people, but for the world they inhabited, a world that made them and that they also made. Kavanagh’s ancestral Inishowen in Donegal, his family, in its old and new generations, often provide the pivot that turns him to the past, although it also allows for glimpses of the future, through children and grandchildren.’
Seamus Deane
Born in Donegal, educated in Derry, Galway, Dublin, and London, Des Kavanagh is a long-time resident of Galway. He has long been a familiar presence at arts events and poetry readings. As poet Louis de Paor states ‘Sometimes, when I try to imagine an ideal reader, the right combination of rigour and insight, discernment and tact, I look up and see Des Kavanagh, half frowning, half smiling, as he weighs each poem against the music of itself and all he knows of the music of what happens.’
Des now invites readers to give their attention to his poetry.
‘I am very grateful to friends and tutors who provided encouragement and feedback. A particular word of thanks to Seamus Deane who provided the foreword to the book. He sent it to me only a few months before his death and his approval of my work means a lot to me’ said Des Kavanagh.
An orthodontrist by profession, Des has retired from practice and, as he says himself, ‘since putting down the drill I have taken up the quill.’ His work has been shortlisted in the Cúirt New Writing Competition, The Fish Poetry Competition, Hennessy New Irish Writing | Irish Times, and he has broadcasted on RTE’s Radio 1 Sunday Miscellany.
Des’s collection of poems entitled Binnion Road is published by Artisan House, Connemara. It is a beautiful hardback book designed by Vincent Murphy and with original illustrations by Joe Boske.
