Patrick Kavanagh Centre

Patrick Kavanagh was born in Inniskeen in 1904, the son of a cobbler and small farmer, worked the land into his twenties and wrote out of it - The Great Hunger, his long poem of 1942 about rural sexual and spiritual starvation, was considered scandalous enough to attract police attention, and it remains one of the hardest things written about Irish country life. He also wrote some of the most quoted lyric poems in the language. The centre occupies the former Saint Mary's church where he was baptised, with an exhibition on his life, his Dublin years and the libel case that broke his health. Outside, a signposted trail runs through the townlands of the poems - the fields, the road, the school, Shancoduff, and the churchyard where he is buried under a simple wooden cross. The landscape is ordinary drumlin farmland, which is the point of both the poetry and the visit.

What you actually see

• The church - Saint Mary's, where he was baptised, now the exhibition.
• The walking trail - through the townlands and fields named in the poems.
• The grave - in the churchyard, under a plain wooden cross.
• The ordinary landscape - drumlin farmland, which the work is made of.

When to go

April to October; opening is seasonal and limited, and the centre closes in winter - check before travelling. Two hours with the trail.

Honest expectations

Seasonal and limited opening. Inniskeen is a small village with almost no facilities. The trail is roadside walking through farmland, not a scenic route - the interest depends entirely on knowing the poems.

Nearby

Dundalk and the Cooley peninsula are east; Carrickmacross is west.