An Irishman in America

It seems sometimes as if it is required of every writer to take a hero’s quest. It must be in the contract somewhere, in bold print, that to succeed in literature, you must keep moving.

Kevin Kiely flew (in an airplane) from Dublin to Chicago, took a train to Salt Lake City and jumped on a bus across the desert of southern Idaho. His most recent stop landed him in Boise, where he resides as Boise State University’s first Fulbright Scholar.

“My nativity is way over in the very dark woods of Ireland,” Kiely said. “Our landscape is very dark, stony and predominantly green and very wet. I would almost say the horizon in the United States is four times the size of that in Ireland. There is a ferocious sweep of vista and landscape. It hits you.”

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars administered the Fulbright Scholar Program. It began as a means to ease tension following World War II. It sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals to 140 countries to lecture, do research or participate in seminars. Some 800 scholars also come to the United States.

The program is named for Former U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright who sponsored the legislation to start the program in 1946. He was a lawyer and Rhodes Scholar, a lecturer and the president of the University of Arkansas before going into politics. His book “The Aggression of Power” rocked the 1960s.

Kiely said he has added Fulbright to his list of heroes. His application for the program ran to about 80 pages.

“It is an incredible program to get into,” Kiely said. “It really does make one’s scholarly year very, very comfortable.”

This writer is currently teaching a graduate course on William Butler Yeats through the English Department. Part of his scholarship will also be spent in the Theater Arts Department at Boise State. He said he has learned how to read the English poet differently in an American setting. He said since arriving in Boise he has had to re-think what a sentence means. He talked about everything from American slang (and the need for a slang catalog) to the ambiguity and queer value of text messages and e-mails in the technological age.

“I am of a different generation,” Kiely said. “I can recall a time when there would be just a radio (Ireland didn’t get television until 1965). [The newspaper] is a timeless thing.”

He said the first time he heard of The Beatles it was in a newspaper.

“I am completely pro-net. I’ve been brought up on a different tradition to require a massive source of material for the simple reason that if a certain person wants to find a particular book on a particular subject, it is essential at that time, that day or that week in their life that it’s available.”

He has a Website that offers his information 24-hours a day – www.kevinkiely.com.

Check it out for more information. Kiely’s latest book “Breakfast with Sylvia,” is on shelves now. He writes poetry, but he is also a novelist and a playwright. He has won boxes of awards and he is on the Boise State campus. He said our essential contact is with language. Share yours with him.

DUSTIN LAPRAY
Editor-in-Chief

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