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About Time
46 pages, Hardcover
Published September 24, 1970
3 people want to read
About the author
P.J. Kavanagh
36 books17 followersP. J. Kavanagh was a poet, writer, actor, broadcaster and columnist. Born in 1931, son of the radio comedy writer Ted Kavanagh, he went to a Benedictine school, served in the Korean war during national service, and worked for the British Council in Barcelona and Indonesia. He acted on stage and TV – his last appearance in an episode of Father Ted. The Perfect Stranger, awarded the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize in 1966, describes his early life. His columns for The Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement (he called them substitute poems) are collected in People and Places (1988) and A Kind of Journal (2003).
Poetry remained his major occupation. His New Selected Poems came out in 2014. Earlier collections include Presences (1987), An Enchantment (1991) and Something About (2004). His Collected Poems was given the Cholmondeley Award in 1992.
His novel A Song and Dance won the 1968 Guardian Fiction Prize. His other novels are A Happy Man, People and Weather and Only by Mistake, and for younger readers Scarf Jack and Rebel for Good. A travel-autobiography Finding Connections traces his Irish forebears in New Zealand. He edited G. K. Chesterton and Ivor Gurney, and the anthologies Voices in Ireland, The Oxford Book of Short Poems (with James Michie) and A Book of Consolations.
P. J. died in August 2015 in the Cotswold hills, where he had come to live with his wife and two sons over forty years before.
Poetry remained his major occupation. His New Selected Poems came out in 2014. Earlier collections include Presences (1987), An Enchantment (1991) and Something About (2004). His Collected Poems was given the Cholmondeley Award in 1992.
His novel A Song and Dance won the 1968 Guardian Fiction Prize. His other novels are A Happy Man, People and Weather and Only by Mistake, and for younger readers Scarf Jack and Rebel for Good. A travel-autobiography Finding Connections traces his Irish forebears in New Zealand. He edited G. K. Chesterton and Ivor Gurney, and the anthologies Voices in Ireland, The Oxford Book of Short Poems (with James Michie) and A Book of Consolations.
P. J. died in August 2015 in the Cotswold hills, where he had come to live with his wife and two sons over forty years before.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 3, 2012
I came to this just after reading Ted Hughes "Birthday Letters" and it suffered in comparison. They are keenly observed poems, but don't have anything like the power that Hughes does:
To enter the wood is like walking into a bottle.
Thin low weeds throw globe shadows of green,
balloons of green balancing greys and brown.
In between
thinly, are paths of precise deer.
All the details of this poem - a dipper, the smells of the wood etc. very evocative. I also like his words to his son in the last poem:
Soils, shafts, ancient geologies dictate
the unstraight course of a river.
I shall never know anything of your turnings.
You were one of mine.
To enter the wood is like walking into a bottle.
Thin low weeds throw globe shadows of green,
balloons of green balancing greys and brown.
In between
thinly, are paths of precise deer.
All the details of this poem - a dipper, the smells of the wood etc. very evocative. I also like his words to his son in the last poem:
Soils, shafts, ancient geologies dictate
the unstraight course of a river.
I shall never know anything of your turnings.
You were one of mine.
Displaying 1 of 1 review