BORRIKEEN : Unmasking Patrick Kavanagh

An imaginative blend of fact and fiction telling the absorbing story of the life and times of Ireland's greatest poet of the twentieth century. Offering a compact, engrossing, intelligent and witty account sourced from extensive memoirs and quotations from the poet's work, so unearthing the man behind the mask.



We see him rise, amid memorable characters, from obscurity to fame, infamy and finally be recognized and respected at home and feted in America. All this despite his curmudgeonly nature that pushed away friends and made him enemies. He fulfilled the stereotype of the drunken man of letters, rude in public, misbehaving on formal occasions. Yet his was “the poetry of passionate memory”. The tough realism in his work that intimately touches the heart of his readers was achieved in the teeth of an uncaring society. Like many geniuses, Kavanagh gave joy to the many and hell to a few closer to home.



But was there more to him than this?

Enter Agnes McMahon, a country girl who opened up a world of tenderness to him and was the great love of his life. Cruel circumstances part them and Agnes must forge her own future in the land of opportunity while Kavanagh wears the scars of this lost love for the rest of his life, his borrikeen his patch on the soul.