Enniscorthy to honour native son Tóibín

NOVELIST COLM Tóibín is to be honoured with a civic reception by his native Enniscorthy during events to mark the Co Wexford town’s 1,500th anniversary.

The town council said it was fitting that the life and work of the town’s “most internationally acclaimed writer” should be “celebrated and honoured”.

The ceremony will form part of year-long festivities to mark the anniversary of the town’s foundation by St Senan in AD 510. The celebrations get under way tomorrow night with a concert in the Pugin-designed St Aidan’s Cathedral. The chairman of the town council, Seán Doyle, said the town’s foundation could be traced back to 1,500 years ago when the Co Clare-born St Senan established a monastic settlement on the banks of the river Slaney.

In a reference to Enniscorthy’s strong republican tradition, he said the anniversary was “not based on the town getting a charter from a foreign king like Kilkenny and New Ross” – both of which have recently celebrated the anniversaries of their receipt of royal charters. Highlights of Enniscorthy 1500 include a “spectacular” open-air event, the Enlightenment Parade, on March 6th, and the reopening, following its refurbishment by the Office of Public Works, of Enniscorthy Castle, a one-time residence of Tudor poet Edmund Spenser which now houses a museum of material mainly related to the 1798 Rising.

A one-day seminar, entitled Colm Tóibín: The Writer and his Writing Explored, will take place on Saturday, January 16th. Tóibín will read from his work and participate in an interview and question and answer session. Among scheduled speakers are Roy Foster, professor of Irish history at the University of Oxford, and Trinity College Dublin lecturers Paul Delaney and Christina Hunt Mahony. Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955 and his latest novel, Brooklyn, features a character who emigrates from the town to New York.

Other well-known natives of Enniscorthy include the acclaimed poet and biographer Anthony Cronin, and Eileen Gray, a 20th-century furniture designer, architect and leading figure of the art deco movement in Paris. She died in 1976.