He avoided intellectual pretension and literary posturing, and his attitude to poetic language could be summed up in the title of one of his epic poems, "Poetry my Arse".
[9] A prolific and fluent writer, there are more than fifty volumes of poetry to his credit, including My Dark Fathers (1964),[7] Collection One: Getting Up Early (1966),[10] Good Souls to Survive (1967), Dream of a Black Fox (1968), Love Cry (1972), The Voices (1973), Shelley in Dublin (1974),[7] A Kind of Trust (1975), Islandman (1977),[11] A Small Light (1979),[12] and The House That Jack Didn't Build (1982).
He also authored two novels, "The Crooked Cross" (1963) and "The Florentines" (1967),[7] and three plays in a Greek Trilogy, Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women.
[18] Language was important in Kennelly's work – in particular the vernacular of the small and isolated communities in North Kerry where he grew up, and of the Dublin streets and pubs where he became both roamer and raconteur for many years.
[19] His language is also grounded in the Irish-language poetic tradition, oral and written, which can be both satirical and salacious in its approach to human follies.
[22] Kennelly died on 17 October 2021, at a care home in Listowel, where he resided in the two years leading up to his death.