Kavanagh, Patrick (Joseph) (1905–1967)

Irish poet, born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, who moved to Dublin in 1939. Kavanagh's poetry creates a sense of small-scale, parochial Ireland, and expresses a variety of moods, from the gentle and elegiac to the satiric and savage. The collections include Ploughman and Other Poems (1936); The Great Hunger (1942), a long, energetic poem about life in rural Ireland; Come Dance with Kitty Stobling (1960); and Collected Poems (1964).

Until 1939 Kavanagh farmed on a small scale in County Monaghan. In Dublin he worked for various newspapers and as a broadcaster, as well as briefly editing a review, Kavanagh's Weekly, in 1952.