Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), poet and novelist, was born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan. He worked on his family’s small farm before moving to Dublin to work as a full-time writer when he was 35. Although he often felt he did not belong in the city, Kavanagh was well known in artistic circles here, and he frequented Dublin’s literary pubs with other writer friends including Brendan Behan and Flann O’Brien. He is perhaps best known for his poem The Great Hunger, an extended meditation on rural poverty and deprivation that challenges romantic views of rural Ireland. Aged 63, Kavanagh fell ill with pneumonia during an Abbey Theatre performance of his play Tarry Flynn. He died in Dublin in 1967, and was buried in Inniskeen.
