RTE legend Jon Kenny has made a major career move as he’s set to perform at Electric Picnic amid his cancer treatment. The Limerick man is best known for his part in Irish comedy duo D'unbelievables and has starred in RTE 's Killinaskully, Father Ted , and The Banshees of Inisherin to name a few. The iconic comedian and actor has now delved into poetry reading.
Jon only started writing poems about a year ago and is already performing his material at Ireland's biggest festival. The 66-year-old explained how he got into the literary art "by accident". He told The Irish Sun : "I'd been writing some prose and doing some short stories and stuff like that.
And then I just started writing about some certain stuff that was going on in my head or certain stuff that I had recalled. "For some reason I just started putting them into the poetry format. And it just seemed to.
.. it was good, it seemed to work for me.
"I seemed to be able to go somewhere with the poetry that maybe I wouldn't go with a short story or a piece of prose - something that would be more like a memoir. "The poetry allows me that leeway to go different directions or go a bit deeper into things." Jon still makes sure to add some humour within his writing as he explained: "I come from a comic background anyway.
"I've always been fascinated with the idea of comedy and the sort of pathos of comedy. They're very close, well to me anyway." Jon read his poems out aloud in front of a crowd for the first time in his hometown in May and has since performed at Listowel Writers' Week and Kinsale Arts Festival.
Despite being in the performing arts industry for many decades, Jon was still nervous for his first poetry gig as he explained: "I was a bit apprehensive about it because, in the poetry, it's a very personal thing. "Although there's comic stuff in it, even serious subjects with the poetry, I tend to put a bit of humour in them because I'm a kind of believer in myself that, like, 'Jesus, we have to have humour in life'. "Life is full of humour, and we use humour even to get through the darker moments.
" The dad-of-two was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma back in 2000 and through extensive chemotherapy treatment he came out the other side. Unfortunately, in 2020, the cancer returned and Jon had to receive an intense operation on his left lung. He had an operation to remove the cancer, however, it came back again and he is currently being treated with chemotherapy.
Jon opened up about how he's been doing while going through treatment saying: "It's all going well, and it's very positive. "I'm still on treatment for my cancer and stuff, and so I just have to take it handy, and I'm very lucky that I'm, thanks to God, that the kind of crew have me fixed up, the medical crew have me fixed up, and I can do stuff again. Which is great, it's all good.
"It just took me off the circuit for a while, I hadn't worked in over a year and a half, so it's nice to be back doing a bit. "But it's good to be back doing a bit, no matter what I'm doing, whether I'm doing stand-up comedy or whether I'm doing my own sketches or reading poetry." When asked how Jon stays so positive, he replied: "It can vary from day to day, week to week, but overall, I'm a pretty positive person anyway.
"I try to be, and it's not easy. It's not easy for anyone. I take inspiration from people around me - the people that are treating me, the medical team, are an inspiration.
" Jon will be performing with The Poetry Kiln Collective on Sunday, August 18, between 1pm and 3pm in The Word Tent, which Dave Hynes and Marty Mulligan curated, in Mindfield at the picnic. Speaking about his material for the festival, Jon said: "A lot of them [the poems] are autobiographical, well, they're not necessarily autobiographical, some of them have stories, but I suppose I am somewhat maybe stuck in the middle of a lot of these stories. "They are about my experiences or what I have experienced.
But they're on a very wide range of topics. "I don't know exactly what the programme is going to be, or what exactly I'm going to do on the day, but I have plenty of material so we'll just see what the feel is in the space. "I'm just doing my own thing with it.
I'm just following my gut instinct really. "I don't know what I'm doing, but what I'm doing seems to be going well with people, and getting a very good reaction to it, so that's interesting.".
