Ken performing a book launch for my publishing company
Wynkin de Worde in 2004
I first met Ken and his wife Phyl over 30 years ago now when working as an Obstetrician I delivered Grace, their beautiful daughter. A friendship was born (literally) with Grace the midwife. Over time the friendship evolved to take me on a journey of participation into the artistic, metaphysical and literary world that Ken inhabited, shared and encouraged. Beyond sharing his literary contacts and nous he was extraordinarily generous. On one occasion I ran into a tight squeeze when a bridging loan was delayed and he and Phyl offered to tide me over for the 3 days or so it took for the situation to be resolved without any form of collateral other than good wishes. Extraordinarily kind. And typical of them both.
In Grace I always saw the sometimes fragile child in Ken but in Ken I always saw the beauty and intelligence and strength that lay within Grace and which Ken drew upon for his own existence.
Grace and Ken
KEN had a PH.D in Metaphysics and a Master's in Life. The Ph.D awarded by Trinity College Dublin was in the branch of philosophy which examins the foundation principles of all our reality. Ken's crime writing, his character's and his own exploration of the abstractions of reality, were dark, grave (literally), brutal, pared back meanderings through the streets and alleyways of Galway and beyond.
On my bookshelf amongst his other books I have a copy of an early work Dispatching Baudelaire which I love and also a small monograph from the Mysterious Bookshop in New York where Ken has an interview with self about his lead character Jack Taylor. He says of himself in typical Bruen punctuation and cadence,
"I confuse people, not deliberately but they read the books, thank god! (How Irish is that?), with the darkness, ferocity, brutality and then they meet me and I'm mellow, easy to be with, and they're a tad bewildered."
To Phyl and Grace my deepest condolences.
"There floats out there
The shape that I shall take when I am dead,
My soul's first shape, a soft feathery shape,
And is not that a strange shape for a soul
Of a great fighting man?"
WB Yeats "The Death of Cuchulain"
May Ken, the "great fighting man" finally rest in peace and at peace amongst the feathers.
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