iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 22h

Excited to speak about *Gulliver’s Travels* and scotomaphobia (fear of sight loss) at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century-Studies Research Seminar, University of York. I look forward to being among eighteenth-centuryists en masse! Thanks for the invitation CECS colleagues.

The Fear You Had for Your Eyes: The Terror of Sight Loss in Gulliver's Travels
1726)
Dr Declan Kavanagh
University of Kent, D.Kavanagh@kent.ac.uk|slide

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I had a wonderful evening at the Maidstone Literary Festival last night, where I was fortunate enough to win the 2026 poetry competition and to read the winning poem. Many thanks to the judges and the organisers. I am very grateful for my work being recognised in this way #nationalpoetryday

Trophy which reads: winner Maidstone lit Fest poetry competition 2026.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It was such an honour to read my poetry at Maidstone Literature Festival tonight on #nationalpoetryday and to be among so many gifted poets at the sold out poetry night. Many thanks to everyone involved in organising the event. #MaidstoneLitFest

Picture of a long haired man with red hair in a yellow shirt with a microphone and poetry pamphlet. The scene is shadowy but the yellow shirt is excessively vibrant.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

New article just published in ‘Èire-Ireland’ Journal on the queer Irish novel and death in the Irish diaspora #IrishStudies #queerliterature #queernovel #Irishdiaspora

Éire-Ireland
© Dying to Be Seen: AIDS, Diaspora, and the Queer Irish Novel
Declan Kavanagh
Éire-Ireland
Irish-American Cultural Institute
Volume 61, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2026
pp. 259-283
10.1353/eir.2026.a1001973
Article
View Citation
Additional Information

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’ve been wrestling with the villanelle form and am afraid it has broken me! It really doesn’t allow for any give! Anyway, here’s a poem about the oldest tree in Ireland (or so I was told). #villanelle #Kildare #Maynooth #Cromabú #poetry

Yew Tree at Maynooth
This yew remembers his back on its bark.
Strange melodies coiled in roots underground.
Skin lily white, cap's embroidered silk mark.
Fingers pluck lute strings, dull notes falling stark.
Sanguineous arils hang heavy and round.
This yew remembers his back on its bark.
Bréagadóiri tricks cast wide for a lark.
Russet-red fissure where poison is found.
Skin lily white, cap's embroidered silk mark.
Stanihurst's 'brainless boy' fighting monarch or Pale and Gael hero at last unbound?
This yew remembers his back on its bark.
Crom abú to St. Mary's in rebel arc.
To surrender sword, the Council confound.
Skin lily white, cap's embroidered silk mark.
Leave our shores! Now English-born must embark.
Under siege, stone walls artillery pound.
This yew remembers his back on its bark.
Skin lily white, cap's embroidered silk mark.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

What a nice surprise - my contributor copy of Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr Volume 41 2026 arrived. Belinda wants me to read it all in one go! #18thcentury #irishstudies

Tabby cat (the most beautiful) on an orange stool next to a volume of essays - orange cover.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Leading a creative writing workshop on Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) in Special Collections at Kent, writing objects and subjects big and small. Wed 28 Oct, 2pm until 4pm, Templeman Library. Email D.kavanagh@kent.ac.uk to reserve a place. #CreativeWriting #GulliversTravels

Writing Big and Small after Gulliver
A Creative Workshop
Dr Swift
First published in 1726, the first two books of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels turn on a single trick played in opposite directions: shrink the world around its narrator, and even the smallest objects and gestures of Lilliputian court life become petty and absurd; leave him ordinary-sized among the giants of Brobdingnag, and the plainest objects, and the bodies of the people who use them, become overwhelming, even repulsive, at close range. This workshop invites participants to think about their chosen objects or subjects in both big and small ways, using inspiration from the Special Collections holdings to write other worlds into existence.
Date: Wednesday 28 October 2026
Time: 2.00pm - 4.00pm
Venue: Special Collections & Archives, Templeman Library, University of Kent,
Canterbury
Led by: Dr Declan Kavanagh
Places limited - materials provided - all levels welcome
To reserve a place, email D.kavanagh@kent.ac.uk

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I just received my copy of issue 19 of @thealchemyspoon.bsky.social , which features my poem ‘A Stranger’s Gift’ amongst stellar company. It is a poem about organ donation and if you have time to reflect upon it please do consider your own wishes and let these wishes be known to your next of kin.

A Stranger's Gift
For the donor and his family
On an evening in the bleakest October, in the life of a family, the phone call came. She was sleeping.
Her daughter woke her and packed a small bag.
Coaxing her mother like a child, they set out for Dublin. It was now time.
After months of neon glow. Of night itch.
Of children quietly lifting the weight of a history.
Of an origin. Though they would sooner die than let go each knew the malignancy of feathered stirrings.
Each knew no matter the grip it could pass through fingers like water.
But now she would arrive. Now she would sit on a white bed with a crow on her back.
The daughter nervously watching its beak jab as concerned nurses whisper about fire.
Earlier, that evening,
in the worst day, in the worst hour, in the entire life of another family, a miracle was ordained.
In another room, in another city, in another history, a sweet prayer was sung.
The saintly man would indeed gift all he could not take.
No tongue can truly speak this humanity.
Only that the doctors returned to Dublin cradling a faint spark.
They tell the daughter to leave.
She leaves the room. She holds her breath.
There is nothing for her to do now but trace the twinkling of star light. Nothing for her to see but a stranger's final gift blazing bright as a feasting bird slowly takes flight.
Declan Kavanagh

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

These proofs were hiding in my junk inbox. This article explores death and dying in the queer Irish novel focusing on the work of Colm Toíbín and Katherine O’Donnell & AIDS representation, the Irish diaspora, and temporality. Out in Éire-Ireland in the coming weeks #IrishStudies #QueerNovel

DECLAN KAVANAGH Dying to Be Seen: AIDS,
Diaspora, and the Queer Irish Novel
LITERARY NARRATIVES that explore queer identities within the Irish diaspora have garnered critical attention over the last decade in Irish studies. Focusing upon queer subjects in women's migrant litera-ture, Tina O'Toole has explored the "ways in which queer kinship and migrant affinities unsettle the fixities of family and place in Irish culture. Moreover, Ed Madden has argued that the study of queer Irish sexualities constitutes a diasporic project in and of itself. This article builds upon O'Toole's and Madden's important readings

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Happy to share this statement from the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, which responds to recent comments about my position as Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth Century Studies and work I supervise. Solidarity with all marginalised academics under attack by the peddlers of a culture war.

Statement from BSECS
Published on: 18th Aug 2026
BACK
The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies supports the work of scholars of the period from all backgrounds and career stages, working in all disciplines. The Society has recently reaffirmed its commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in all its activities, and its opposition to bullying and harassment.
As such, members of the Society have been deeply concerned about the public hounding of academics by sections of the media and on social media platforms.
In the current 'culture wars', universities and their staff
- and Black scholars in particular - have been targeted to score political points about EDI, 'woke' culture and progressive causes. This tragically came to a head last week with the death of Prof Jason Arday, who had been subjected to weeks of hostile commentary and personal attacks.

A recent article in The Spectator typified this trend. In this article, one of our own colleagues and his doctoral students were attacked for their work on queer readings of fiction. We stand in solidarity with our colleague, and strongly object to any such attempt to bully scholars and students in our field.
Furthermore, we insist that the study of sexuality is a legitimate and urgent academic endeavour, not least because many of today's attitudes towards sex and gender have their roots in the eighteenth century.
Indeed, current scholarship on the eighteenth century is very much alive to the challenges faced by society today, in fields such as race, gender, class and the environment, among many others. The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies will continue to support those who carry out this important work, and we wish to assure our members that the Society will stand up to any attempt to harass them.
The Executive Committee of BSECS

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A love letter to the queer sublime ❤️‍🔥

Poster for film featuring two female actors blood stained

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Very excited to receive proofs for my forthcoming article in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Issue 41. Coming out later this year all things going well. #disability #eighteenthcentury #memoir #GulliversTravels #MichaelClancy #JonathanSwift

'A picture presented to all our Senses': Vision in Gulliver's Travels (1726) and Michael Clancy's
Memoirs (1750)
DECLAN KAVANAGH

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Really pleased with St James’ Gate up on my wall in my Canterbury flat. Art by: stevenfarrell.ie/password?srs...

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Really lovely to receive this kind and thoughtful feedback on the ‘Nostaglia and Place: Writing the University of Kent at 60’ workshop on Friday 19th of June University of Kent #DiamondWeekendKent

It was very friendly and accessible - I didn't feel pressured to share or participate in discussions but | still felt invited to. There was plenty of time to write in a guided way and to look at interesting archival objects I wouldn't otherwise have seen, and it was well-paced and structured.
I enjoyed the range of prompts and the way Declan gave the perfect amount of direction and support but also space for ideas to germinate. I really appreciated the helpful feedback. It was also a lovely group size that allowed for the sharing of ideas and a sense of honesty and intimacy in sharing.
Lovely open facilitator and supportive group

I loved today's session! There was a huge range of materials that prompted good questions. Very good balance of craft talk and inspiration talk. The environment was super welcoming, I felt comfortable sharing and thinking about things I might not normally.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Today I led a creative writing workshop @kent.ac.uk ‘Nostalgia and Place: Writing the University at 60’. Prep involved a deep dive into the University’s archive and reading materials from across the decades 1960s to 2000s. It was deeply absorbing to trace the voices of staff and students past.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

If there’s something I can never have enough of, it’s mugs! Congratulations to all of the winners. So lovely to see students recognise colleagues in this way.

Two cups: teaching excellence and outstanding academic advisor

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

The Japanese ambassador to the U.K. Hiroshi Suzuki pictured enjoying his recent trip to Folkestone is the level of diplomatic relation bliss that I want to see from all of our diplomats.

The Japanese ambassador to the U.K. Hiroshi Suzuki pictured enjoying his recent trip to Folkestone - pictured with a giant seagull in a seagull pose.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Wonderful to hear from panellists @kent.ac.uk ‘Humanity at the Crossroads’ event to commemorate Edward Said’s T.S. Eliot lectures at Kent in 1987. We heard recordings of Said and my gosh that man could articulate himself (beautiful cadence). I will be reflecting upon this for some time #EdwardSaid

Panellists at the event including Wadie Said (Edward Said’s son).

Dr Julie McCandless introduces the session

Panelist speaks about Lebanon with image of Edward Said throwing a stone (we think).

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

If you’re joining us @kent.ac.uk for our 60th anniversary celebrations in June think about registering for this #creativewriting workshop I am running on nostalgia and place in collaboration with the Special Collections & Archives, Templeman library #Kentat60 #universityofkent #ukhighered

Nostalgia and Place:
WRITING THE UNIVERSITY OF KENT AT 60
A creative writing workshop on the theme of nostalgia and place led by Dr Declan Kavanagh (School of Humanities) and hosted by the Special Collections and Archives, Templeman Library.
Are you a Kent alumnus who writes creatively or would like some dedicated time to do so in a supportive environment? Are you interested in the history of the University, its Canterbury campus and wider cultural life?
Join us for a bespoke creative-writing workshop (and archival treasure hunt) on Friday 19th of June at 3pm in the cosy reading room of Kent's Special Collections & Archives.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
We will explore some items from the University's 60-year
archive
(photographs; documents; ephemera and other treasures).
We will gently start to think about how these artefacts can help us tease out the connections between memory and place.
There will then be
some opportunities to free write using the archival
materials as prompts.
The workshop will conclude with reflections on what participants have written in whatever way feels most comfortable for them (sharing their work or sharing how it felt writing it or not sharing anything at all).
Kent
WE ARE KENT
PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE
A Diamond Weekend
Places are limited to allow for meaningful workshopping and due to room capacity.
For additional information please contact Dr Declan
Kavanagh: D.kavanagh@kent.ac.uk

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I spent my BH Monday writing a lecture on how to approach writing reviews. This one from the New York Times made me laugh. I love overnight oats like I love me some W.B. Yeats: Second Coming #Irishliterature

"As discouraging as a breakfast of cold porridge."
Collected Poems, by W.B. Yeats (1896)

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Happy bank holiday day or as I like to call it, writing new lectures day! #UKhighered

Coffee cup on window sill with cat ornament and ghost bin. Cathedral towers in the hazy distance.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I enjoyed this 8/10. On some level it’s about institutionalised and local forms of gender-based violence, which gets subsumed into a narrative about trauma and self acceptance. Cork comes off well, too #Hokum

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Examining a (wonderful) PhD in London today and how dare the city look so good!

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I’ve spent about ten hours preparing an MA seminar on blindness and memoir. A lot of it stems from an auto critical discourse analysis essay I wrote here: www.routledge.com/Finding-Blin... but I’ve removed all of the personal stuff & just kept it about that authors assigned #DerekJarman & #JohnHull

Laptop with a slide about ‘recording blindness’ picturing text and some cassette tapes.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Lovely to host everyone at Darwin College @kent.ac.uk for our @bsecs.bsky.social council Spring Away Day. Wonderful discussions in person and online with some exciting #18century related developments in the offing. Safe home everyone!

Light display in Darwin College University of Kent - stunning brutalist interior.

Setting up the boardroom tech for the society’s conversations.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Teaching today with the Dan Thompson Collection @kent.ac.uk Special Collections - students on the MA module Activism & Adaptation spent some time thinking about zines as reparative artefacts #Zines #Margate #queer

Front cover of zine ‘Rumors’ - person posing

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Good morning! This week is a lot of marking for me and trying to get writing projects sorted in the evening. Hope everyone has a productive week! #ukhighered #acwri

Picture of Canterbury cathedral in the sun - my home office view

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Proofs! Forthcoming chapter in *The Cambridge History of the Irish Novel* amongst stellar company & excellently steered by Prof Chris Morash. I’ll be doing these with some Easter chocolate to power me through #IrishLiterature #Novels #speirgorm #GulliversTravels

Lives and Adventures 2
Irish Men and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
DECLAN KAVANAGH
If novels by and about women in the eighteenth century initiate a new literary form for the exploration of interiority, the opposite case might be made for many of the novels by and about Irish men. The long-held belief that the eighteenth century inaugurated a new language of interiority or subjectivity associated with the joint rise of empiricism and the novel has been challenged by scholars such as Jonathan Kramnick who argue that for many writers in the period, the 'ostensible privacy or interiority of mental states is often not at issue' in their writing.' More particularly, the precarity of the novel-reading (and -writing) classes in Ireland, and their awareness of living in a culture in which definitions of a 'gentleman' were dangerously unfixed, seemingly produce literary forms that are constantly veering towards the unstable and anti-mimetic territory of satire, allegory, and the picaresque. One of the best known such works by an Irish writer (if not actually set in Ireland) is Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67); unique as it might appear, it sits in a context of other works by Irish writers of the period.* Novels by Anglo-Irish men in the eighteenth century, more often than not, disrupted the very project of bourgeois masculinity that the new literary form of the English novel promulgated as the century progressed." Any survey of Irish men and the novel in eighteenth-century Ireland must thus begin by qualifying what is meant by Irish' and what is meant by 'the novel'. The designations of 'Irish' or "Anglo-Irish' have a contested history both in the historical context of eighteenth-century Ireland and in its ancillary scholarly field of Irish eighteenth-century studies. As James Ward articulates in his essay Irish and Anglo-Irish Writing' (2024):

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Important people in my neighbourhood today: PM, Royals; M15 knocking about plus the old bill. I couldn’t even post a letter because the postbox had been closed up. Impressive amount of security.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Fortuitous moment to walk onto the high street just as the most reverend and right honourable Sarah Mullally completes her pilgrimage from London to Canterbury to assume her role as Archbishop of Canterbury #archbishopofcanterbury

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

It’s all happening here during essay marking. Worf (from the future) has just phasered Captain Picard. We don’t know why. Also a Cardassian ship and a cat because why not. Tune in for an update (soon).

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

What a pleasure to hear the legendary Jeanette Winterson read tonight at the Faversham Literary Festival. She spoke afterwards (without notes) on the topic of literature & reading in our times. She really knows how to hold an audience in the palm of her hand. Razor sharp & beloved #JeanetteWinterson

A man with long red hair standing with a woman with dark hair

An open book signed To Declan Jeanette Winterson Because We Try To Change Things

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

New study ornament. You won’t believe me but Troi and Geordi are both inside #StarTrek

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I am teaching a seminar today on Samuel Richardson + responding to all the emails I let slip whilst moving. There’s also a @bsecs exec meeting, which will be a good opportunity to pour over feedback on the January conference. What are you up to? #Acwri

Desk view with window / cathedral in frame / grey sort of day

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Happy St. Brigid’s day - poem by Maureen Boyle that is achingly beautiful #mnà #StBrigid

Maureen Boyle
ST BRIGID IN THE ORCHARD
My favourite story of you takes place in an orchard.
To begin, I imagine it as spring - grass wet underfoot, the air coloured in blossom. But now, I think it is winter, the sharp days around your feast day, the old trees gnarled in the wet, the nascent buds whorled and hidden.
And there you come upon a young woman who is tortured by what has seeded in her without her choosing - an intimate anguish that has her almost inarticulate with fear.
You are our Pomona, concerned not with fruit but with flourishing
knowing that not all grafts take, that seeding is not the best way
to make a new tree, that the canopy must be opened.
And so, you gift her, her peace. The chronicle tells us you,
'Made the child disappear with no pain', meaning that when the spring comes, she will blossom into herself again.

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DeclanKavanagh.bsky.social @drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

After 12 solid hours of moving, I am finally in my new apartment. I am never moving again (too time consuming, boring, having to deal with belongings I have no memory of buying: no). Current view

Picture shows a lit up Canterbury cathedral against an inky black sky

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