Kavanagh Weekend 2024

Small wet hills full of stones

A line from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem Having to Live in the Country. And very much a starting point of inspiration for the Patrick Kavanagh Centre’s annual Kavanagh Weekend brand identity.

Kavanagh Weekend, in association with the Patrick Kavanagh Society and Sofft Productions, takes place on the last weekend of September. This three day festival consists of a full programme of events and activities that take place in the Patrick Kavanagh Centre and Round Tower Church in Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan. The weekend attracts Irish and overseas visitors and encompasses a packed programme of lectures, discussions, workshops, poetry readings and exhibitions.

During research I considered the contradictory aspects associated with the man and his work. In his poems we encounter his love affair with nature, yet he often expressed the harsh nature of the Drumlin county. 

Eavan Boland phrased it sublimely in her essay' ‘Patrick Kavanagh: Fifty Years On’ for Poetry Ireland Issue 122; “beautiful, plain-speaking poems with their powerful complications”. Antoinette Quinn also referenced a contrariness, saying ‘He had a kamikaze predilection for turning on benefactors and friends’.

This concept pays homage to the hills surrounding South Monaghan that were often referenced in Kavanagh’s poetry through a flexible landscape-inspired visual language and typographic system. The fluid layered drumlin shapes in autumnal tones are juxtaposed with beautifully chiseled and angular typography featuring unexpected quirks that are evocative of rough cut stones and Kavanagh's personality. This distinctive creative expression plays on those opposites – i.e. the rough and the smooth – which come together across all online and offline communications.

The graphic system was applied across animated and static social posts, posters, an A3 fold out brochure, newspaper ads, plus large format digital and printed displays that served as a backdrop to events over the festival weekend.

Photography courtesy of The Patrick Kavanagh Centre (NLI) and Barbara Egan (Reportage Photography).