From the Archives
UCD has been offering learning opportunities to adults since 1949 and the Adult Education Centre has been delivering part-time courses for over five decades.
The Adult Education Centre fulfils the University's obligation to facilitate Lifelong Learning under the Universities Act 1997. The Centre is also involved in advocating for greater access for adult learners.
Callers are welcome! You'll find us on the first floor of the Belfield Library Building
From the Archives
The UCD Adult Education Centre has been privileged to work with many gifted facilitators. We found correspondence in the archives relating to one such tutor - Patrick Kavanagh. Our thanks to copyright holder, John Dardis SJ (Irish Jesuit Provincial) and to the Patrick Kavanagh Archive, UCD Library, for their kind permission to reproduce this letter.
Rather like the Gaelic bards of old, Patrick Kavanagh believed that the rulers of society owed the poet a living. So he wrote in 1954 to the Taoiseach, John A Costello, seeking financial help. Costello thereupon requested Dr Michael Tierney, President of UCD, to create a post for the poet. Knowing Kavanagh's reputation for irascible commentary, Tierney deflected the proposal with an alternative suggestion that Kavanagh be appointed as a poetry officer to the Arts Council.
Nothing came of that scheme and Tierney finally consented to hire the poet as a part-time lecturer for UCD's Board of Extra Mural Studies, while the Arts Council agreed to publish a booklet on his lectures. The poet was hospitalised with lung cancer in 1955 and was visited by Tierney, who fast-tracked the appointment at a salary of £400 per annum. Kavanagh recovered from his operation and spoke to the L and H in October 1955.
In the spring of 1956 then public lectures by him were announced in the Irish Times. The early talks were well attended and warmly received, but the audience soon dwindled for the later efforts, which Kavanagh sought to enliven by attacks on figures in the political and cultural establishment. Although he submitted a disorganised manuscript to the Arts Council, the proposed booklet never materialised. UCD continued to pay the salary, however. Something of the nervousness induced in the academic mind by the early talks is evidenced in Father Coyne's guarded letter of November 1957, welcoming the proposal to read new poems following Kavanagh's recovery of health, but worrying about the tenor of any remarks he might also wish to make. The assumption that Kavanagh could be relied on to be prudent and balanced was clearly a pious hope rather than a certainty.
Professor Declan Kiberd
UCD School of English and Drama, July 2005
