Call for applications for the Kavanagh Fellowship, 2021

 

Call for applications for the Kavanagh Fellowship, 2021

Trustees of the estate of Katherine Kavanagh,

 3 Selskar Terrace, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.

The Trustees of the Estate of Katherine Kavanagh intend to offer the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, normally of up to €8,000, again in 2021.   The Fellowship is specifically for Irish poets in their middle years.  Poets in order to be eligible must have published a substantial body of work, and show that they are in particular need of assistance.

Poets who think they may be entitled to apply are strongly advised to request further information on the conditions of application for the Fellowship, by writing to the Trustees at 3, Selskar Terrace, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, or by email to pktrust@tcd.ie  

There is no application form, but applicants will be asked to supply documentary evidence of age, financial need and Irish citizenship.  They will also be asked to supply copies of publications.

The Fellowship will be awarded in November, 2021.

The deadline for applications is 3rd September, 2021.  

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

on behalf of the Kavanagh Trustees

The Trustees are Moya Cannon, Hugh Mohan, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Eunan O’Halpin and Peter Sirr. 

Registered charity No. 20033026.  The Trustees have complied with the Charities Governance Code.

Lines for a Lockdown: ‘I write in order to comprehend not to express myself’

The Lamp

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something will suddenly happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandmas crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing so much
as for that faith.

                          by Anna Kamieńska

from Astonishments, Selected Poems of Anna Kamieńska, edited and translated by Grażyna Drabik and David Carson, Paraclete Press, 2007.

Poetry Day Ireland: Peter Sirr interviewed by Ailbhe Darcy

Interview

Lines for a Lockdown: ‘The seconds fall and scatter into thousands/Of tiny saints’

Cranborne Woods (17 May, 1994)
(for my mother)

We stopped the car, ducked below the fence
Felt time unravelling in a revelation
The seconds fall and scatter into thousands

Of tiny saints, a reborn multitude
Flowing past the trees, through pools of sun,
Each earthly form a spirit flame, pure blue.

They watched us drift among them, large as gods,
As if we’d come as part of their parousia
To stay with them forever in these woods.

As time grew darker we slipped away like ghosts
And slowly drove...towards your death next May
When once again I saw the risen host

Could watch you walking weightlessly among
The welcomers, the gently swaying throng.

                                                 by James Harpur


from Oracle Bones (Anvil Press, 2001)

James can be heard reading this poem here

Lines for a Lockdown: in memory of Eavan Boland

Energies

This is my time:
the twilight closing in,
a hissing on the ring,
stove noises, kettle steam

and children’s kisses.

But the energy of flowers!
Their faces are so white –
my garden daisies –
they are so tight-fisted,
such economies of light.

In the dusk they have made hay:
in a banked radiance,
in an acreage of brightness
they are misering the day
while mine delays away

in chores left to do:
the soup, the bath, the fire
then bed-time,
up the stairs –
and there, there

the buttery curls,
the light,
the bran-fur of the teddy bear,
the fist like a night-time daisy,
damp and tight.

by Eavan Boland

from New Collected Poems, Carcanet, 2005.

Lines for a Lockdown: 'When I was still a horse in a meadow'

Self-portrait as a horse

When I was still a horse in a meadow

I must have lived in his body
have seen in his eyes what he saw

that life would never begin nor
would ever end, nor be repeated

I must have left his body and my memories
must have remained behind in him

you are standing by the fence round a meadow
on the other side a horse is standing

look it in the eyes – it will look in yours

by Rutger Kopland

translated by James Brockway

from: Memories of the Unknown, Rutger Kopland, translated by James Brockway, foreword by J.M. Coetzee. The Harvill Press, London, 2001.

Lines for a Lockdown: ‘Her face was white paper on which I scattered my alphabet’

click on image to enlarge