P. J. Kavanagh via

Reviewing P. J. Kavanagh’s New Selected Poems in The Spectator last year, Wynn Wheldon began by lamenting that “P. J. Kavanagh, if not dismissed or relegated, is often shall we say bracketed, as a ‘nature poet.’ ”1 Now, regular readers of The Spectator probably knew who P. J. Kavanagh was, as he had often reviewed books for the magazine and had a column there for more than ten years before moving on to the TLS. The broader British reading public might have known the name, too. In addition to his poetry and journalism, Kavanagh has written travel books, children’s books, novels, and television scripts. He’s also acted in television and films: satirical sketches in the 1960s, a few episodes of the show Father Ted, most prominently (from an American perspective) in Half Moon Street (1986) with Michael Caine and Sigourney Weaver.

Even in the UK, though, many of those readers who started the review in The Spectator may have done so believing it would be about the better-known Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967), of The Great Hunger fame, a confusion that’s dogged P(atrick) J(oseph) Kavanagh throughout his career. In the United States, meanwhile, the younger, English Kavanagh is almost entirely unknown: of the first fifty hits on Google, there’s only one reference to our man from an American source, an issue of The New Yorkerfrom 1971. On these shores—again, to judge from Google—he’s more likely to