Paddy Kavanagh is the Benchmark of Our Story

BY LLOYD AND IMELDA GORMAN

“What are we going to call ourselves?”. That was one of the questions we had to think about when we took over Irish Scene magazine exactly one year ago. The name Irish Scene was never in doubt. The magazine had that moniker for twenty years and everyone in the Irish community knows it by that name. We’d have been fools to change it, and six editions - and one global pandemic - later, we know we did the right thing from the feedback we have had from the community. But we did have to come up with a name for the company through which we would publish it. Our predecessors and friends Fred and Lily printed under Gael Force. We wanted to pick a name that would somehow represent our story. After some brainstorming we came up with a working title: Canal Bank Walk Media. The authorities knocked that one back because you need a special permission to register a company with the word bank in it - perhaps to prevent dodgy operators from setting up businesses pretending to be banks. So in the end we went with the shortened Canal Walk Media. The canal in question is the Grand Canal in Dublin, and the walk bit specifically the section of it between Portobello bridge and Baggot Street bridge. It was along that tree lined stretch of Swan populated canal water that we first walked together when we first met back in the early 1990’s. We stopped and sat at the sculpture and seat of Patrick Kavanagh where we talked about his poetry and other things. The seeds of love were sown on that day, but would take another fourteen years to harvest. At that stage I had a job with IDA Ireland, located in a nearby outdated office block - that was also the previous base for the Australian embassy - from where you could look out the window and see the outline of Paddy Kavanagh pondering away on his seat bench. It was from those offices (which are slated for demolition) that Imelda would walk with our first baby in a pram and pick me up from work and we would walk back to our place in Rathmines. Today we have three fabulous children and a home in Perth and are lucky enough to have started a new life in a great country, including now as the publishers of Irish Scene on behalf of Fred and Lily and all those who have over the years helped make and keep the magazine what it is today, our advertisers and readers. That statue of Kavanagh and the leafy waterside spot it occupies is sacred to us as a couple, a special place that gets visited every time we are ‘home’ in Ireland. As it happens, Kavanagh’s seat sculpture only appeared a short time before our romance began. It was erected in 1991 as part of the Dublin: European City of Culture and unveiled by then President Mary Robinson in front of a large crowd. A student at UCD

living not too far away at the time I would have loved to have been there from the very start. The Kavanagh sculpture and bench was created figurative sculptor John Coll who had only started his professional artistic career six years earlier in 1985 in Galway, where his work reflected the nature and wildlife of the West, to Dublin where he embraced the capitals literary and political personalities. As well as Kavanagh, he was commissioned to portray Brendan Behan in another similar style canal bank location near Binn’s Bridge on the Royal Canal. In a link to what Michael D Higgins said about the Famine memorial An Gorta Mór in Subiaco, the sculpture is engraved with the titles of Behan’s works, including the poem in Irish “Uaigneas”. He has also created the one of the rarest breed of all statues - a monument to a woman, Irish revolutionary and nationalist (to described just two of her many qualities) Countess Markievicz in Rathcormac, Co Sligo. It is worth pointing out that Coll’s sculpture bench for the Irish writer is one of two dedicated to the Cavan man who probably felt connected with nature and his creative side there. Just a short hop from this piece of functional public art and across the lock gates will take you to the ‘original’ Kavanagh bench. Kavanagh was in his early sixties when he died in 1967. It was known to his circle of literary friends that he wanted a seat by the canal and in 1968 they put one in place and it still stands there today, less obvious maybe than its cousin but maybe a little more authentic in some ways. If you are in that part of Dublin you could do worse than meander the canal banks and stop a while on one or either of the benches and enjoy the barge and bustle of life in front of you. I should also probably mention that there is another bench in that immediate area dedicated to another great Irish genius, the songwriter composer and artist Percy French, who also lived very close to the canal. Kavanagh was responsible for the incredible song “On Raglan Above: The Percy French memorial bench and the new memorial art (inset)

Road” but French has dozens of ‘hits’ to his name and enduring classics such as “Are Ye Right there Michael?” and “The Mountains of Mourne”*. The granite seat for French was installed in 1988 (the same year as Dublin’s Millennium) and was sponsored by the Oriel Gallery. The seat bears an inscription, a quip from the man himself: “Remember me is all I ask, And if that memory proves a task, forget.” A sentiment not far removed from Kavanagh’s own musings:

Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin

O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water, preferably, so stilly Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother Commemorate me thus beautifully Where by a lock niagarously roars The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands. A swan goes by head low with many apologies, Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges –And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy And other far-flung towns mythologies. O commemorate me with no hero-courageous Tomb – just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by. *Just before COVID-19 forced Ireland into lockdown, a new monument to French - what you might call a mega upgrade to his bench in Dublin - to was unveiled on March 7 in the shadow of the mountains of Mourne where they sweep down to the sea. Percy French devotee Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon unveiled the €230,000 installation at the Slieve Donard Hotel, Newcastle, Co. Down [which reopened at the start of July]. It is complex piece of public art. The lyrics from The Mountains of Mourne are carved out onto three metal panels that encircle each other. Around the sculpture are four seats made from local Mourne granite. Each one is dedicated to his second wife and daughters and granite slabs with the names of places important to his life and story, such as Roscommon, Ballyjamesduff, Drumcolligher, Co Limerick and Formby, London where he died. Commissioned by Hastings Hotels, Slieve Donard Hotel owners, the piece is designed by Andrew Todd of Tandem Design, who has worked on Titanic Belfast and King John’s Castle in Limerick and was produced by local craftspeople.

Bronze Kavanagh worth its weight in gold Sculptors will traditionally make a preliminary model or sketch of a statue or sculpture before they create the full size thing. The 24.5cm (9¾”) high bronze maquette for the Patrick Kavanagh sculpture came up for grabs about five years ago in a Dublin auction house (Adam’s in St. Stephen’s Green) which came from The Kenny Gallery in Galway, where it was bought. The auctioneers put an estimated value of €1,500.00 - €2,500.00 on the minature which in the end went under the hammer for €6,500.00.

Dedicate your own bench You don’t have to be a famous Irish writer or singer to have your get your own bench, but you might have to be dead first. Depending on the location and what you have in mind - such as naming a garden bed or some other feature are other options - there are some options where some local authorities in Perth will consider allowing a bench with a plaque to be installed upon request (and payment). The Rottnest Island Authority, for example, says it currently has openings for the community to purchase benches with plaques along the Wadjemup Bidi (Rottnest Walk Trail). The cost of a bench is based on cost recovery and includes purchase of a ‘post-consumer Australian recycled plastic’ bench, purchase and routing of plaque, concrete pad, and installation. Bench plaques can fit 400 characters (including spaces). Contact the RIA for more info or your local council if this is something that interests you for a loved one.

A bench at Bickley Bay in Rottnest. Image: www.rottnestfoundation.org.au/

Tony and Veronica McKee PO Box 994 Hillarys WA 6923