Des Kavanagh’s poems are full of the names of people and places he knows or has known well. Names are great familiarisers and Kavanagh’s Ireland is a close and familiar place. But it also bears within it the ache of absence, not just for specific people, but for the world they inhabited, a world that made them and that they also made. Kavanagh’s ancestral Inishowen in Donegal, his family, in it’s old and new generations, often provide the pivot that turns him to the past, although it also allows for glimpses of the future, through children and grandchildren — so said the late Seamus Deane of the Galway poet.
A new Ryanair route, which will fly directly from Shannon Airport to Malta, was launched on Sunday . The route is the first ever scheduled Ryanair service to Malta from Shannon Airport. It will operate twice weekly, each Thursday and Sunday, until October 27, 2022.