The Great Hunger: From Poetic Words to Stage Performance

ABSTRACT: Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, wrote The Great Hunger in 1942, a poem of 14 sections long. He wrote it in the lead-up to the centenary of the Irish famine, which climaxed around 1847. However, the poem does not refer to that time of history. Rather, it tells the story of a poor Irish farmer in County Monaghan, Patrick Maguire, who is culturally, socially, spiritually and sexually frustrated. Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger inspired a stage performance under the same name in the Peacock Theatre (Dublin) crafted by Tom McIntyre in 1983. This play of 21 scenes consists of stage directions for the performance and substitutes gestures and visual and aural effects for the poetic text. Very few words are spoken but the words chosen are boringly repetitive.
This presentation will examine how McIntyre’s stage adaptation illustrates the imaginative meaning in Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger and its theological anthropology.

I hold primary degrees in both Science and Theology. I was awarded a doctorate in Theology by the Gregorian University, Rome, Italy for research in to the anthropological dimension of the writings of the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh in 1991, and a PhD in English by the NUI (UCD) for research in to the religious dimension of James Joyce’s writings in 1998. My research interests lie in the interacting relationships between literature, society, spirituality and religion.