Unpublished works of John B Keane hit the streets of Listowel

IT may not be generally known, but playwright John B Keane was also a prolific writer of songs and poems, a collection of which was launched yesterday on the first anniversary of his death.

Writers’ Week, the annual literary festival in his native Listowel, Co Kerry, was an apt setting for an emotional occasion, attended by his family and friends, and led by his widow Mary.

Also there were his sons, Billy, Conor and John, daughter Joanna, who edited the collection, and grandchildren. It was the first launch of a Keane work at which he himself was not present and some in the attendance at Scoil Realta na Maidne were moved to tears.

The Street, a poem penned about his hometown when he was just 17, is the title of the Mercier Press paperback.

“I love the flags that pave the walk, I love the mud between,” the poem goes. Also included in the book is a song from Sive, May The Snails Devour His Corpse and The Rains Do Harm Worse. A lifelong friend, Padraig Kelly, sang one of his lesser-known songs, Won’t You come under my Shawl.

Another old friend, Fr Kieran O’Shea, Keane’s confessor, recalled how he once said you could tell a person’s age by the amount of poetry they could recite.

Others present included former football stars, Páidi Ó Sé and Jimmy Deenihan.

Conor Keane said the family hoped The Street would be the first of many previously unpublished works of John B Keane to be published and staged in the future. He said a play, Piseogs, which had come to light since his death, would certainly be produced in the coming years.

Since the playwright’s passing, there has been renewed interest in his work.

Two of his plays, The One Way Ticket and The Matchmaker, are being presented during Writers’ Week, the Lartigue Players staging the former and Anna Manahan and Des Keogh playing in the latter.