'"Patrick Kavanagh is a poet for all people"
What is there in the poems of Kavanagh on your course which would lead you
to agree or disagree with the above statement?'

As poets go, Patrick Kavanagh enjoys an exceptionally popular place in the hearts of the Irish public. He offers us a uniquely distilled reflection of ourselves, as people, and uncovers for us an intriguing spiritual landscape, both rich and recogniseable. In this, his poetry is both original and enduring. There is an incredible strength in Kavanagh's poetry. The artist's work progresses steadily from a poor farmer with a love of literature to a brilliant poet, representing a greater portion of Ireland.
In many of Kavanaghs poems, he is an outsider, and the speaker in the poem is aware of the advantages and disadvantages of this. Kavanagh himself felt that:
'A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote and the life of the small-town dances are not for him. He might take part, but he can never belong'
In 2000, 'The Irish Times' published it's 'Book Of Favourite Irish Poems', which 3,500 Irish times readers had nominated. Of the one-hundred poems chosen, Kavanagh appeared twelve times. What is it about Kavanaghs poetry that appeals so strongly to the hearts of the Irish? I believe it is his ability to create a simple situation, in which all can relate, delighting in the ordinary, the natural, the physical. Such is this explored in his poem 'Lines Written On A Seat On The Grand Canal, Dublin'

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A seat on the abnks of the Grand Canal, is involving, inviting.If we sit on that seat we are finding some of the moments of relaxation and ease. Kavanagh is perpetuating that love of place in this sonnet. The poems first words express a tone of longing, a mood of adoration, and the opening lines:

O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer

present the reader with sounds and pictures of stillness and tranquility. The pace and mood are poised, assured, serene and the speaker emerges as a humble, life-loving individual without a hint of self-importance. The words 'commemorate me' are used three times and they express his deep desire to be associated forever with this rural part of urban Dublin. It is this desire I believe relates to many Irish people and draws them in to Kavanagh's mindset.
In a deliberate hyperbole, which Kavanagh creates in the Niagra metaphor, there is a humour but there is also confidence. The canal lock falls are more interesting to this viewer than the real Niagra Falls. The poet creates a special space. The water falling through the lock can be heard but, paradoxically, there is tremendous silence.
The sonnet's conclusion echoes the opening line and the poet rejects the formality and importance of a hero-courages tomb. Is it this informality, the common quality, that appeals to the everyday reader? This can certainly be suggested in Kavanagh's poem 'A Christmas Childhood'.

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In this memory poem, Kavanagh is remembering a magical and mysterious time from his childhood. Line one is a factual, accurate description while line two is powered with emotion in tone, repetition and exclamation mark - 

One side of the potato pits was white with frost - 
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!

The experience was not experienced by Kavanagh alone, for in part one, Kavanagh speaks for all when he says 'We put our ears to the pailing-post' and 'An apple tree/With its December-glinting fruit we saw -'. But the poem focuses on Christmas, seen through one person, a six year old's, imagination, something which we can all relate to.
In this first section, the wonderful and the magical dominate. Hay and straw are ordinary sites on a farm, but for Kavanagh:

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven's gable

Earth gives way to Heaven, everything seems possible and, as usual in Kavanagh's poetry, the ordinary is never forgotten. Part one describes place - potato pits, ricks of hay and straw, apple tree, cattle tracks,a green stone, Part II has a cast of characters. It conjures up the childs sense of being part of a family and of a closley knit Catholic community. It is these images which highlight the rural Irish culture of Kavanagh's time, and furthur explain his appeal to Irish readers.

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Finally, in his poem 'Advent', Kavanagh speaks of the four weeks before Christmas. In Kavanagh's time, religious practices were more strictly observed than they are now and Advent was a time of penance and deprivation. The poem appropriately so divided into four sections. It begins with a feeling of excess and a feeling of being jaded. The 't' and 'st' sounds in the opening lines contribute to this feeling of distaste.

We have tested and tasted too much lover

The poet's present state is one of lacking in wonder. The 'chink' is precious because it provides us with a glimpse of the mysterious and wonderful.

Through a chink too wide 
There comes no wonder

The chink is seen as the purifier, the cleanser, the renewer of vision and so he surrenders again to the purification of darkness, fasting and penance, a common occurance in 20th Century Ireland.
The poem ends with a new beginning. The year begins, the earth is beginning the produce growth, and the striking, wonderful, rare image with which the poem ends points us to the future with a 'January Flower'. As these experiences are universal aspirations, it seems appropriate to assume that these feelings are felt by many more readers, again supporting the opinion that Kavanagh is a poet for all people.
In a lecture entitled 'Man and Poet', Kavanagh said: "We are in too great a hurry. We want a person or a thing to yield their pleasures and their secrets to us quickly for we have other commitments. But it is the days when we are idle, when nothing (-4 A4 Pages-) appears to be happening, which provides us, when no-one is looking, with all that is memorable".

THE END