Mastery of poetry was this playwright’s secret weapon

A writer begins life as a poet, progresses to being a playwright and ends up as a novelist, John B Keane once revealed to me.

This, in many ways, could be said of John B himself.

He wrote poetry from an early age, publishing his work in local newspapers and magazines from the early 1950s: he published Two Eyes, dedicated to Mary O’Connor, who would be his wife, in the Kerryman newspaper in March 1950.