Committee members Tom Seery, Seamus McCormack (president), Joe Farrell, Donall Mac An Bheatha, Sean Ryan, Emma Cassutti, Arthur Conlon (chairman), actor Tony Tiernan, Aisling Goff, Johnny Logan (manager Abbeyshrule Aerodrome), Eoin Farrell, and Willie Flanagan (secretary).

Emigrants, immigrants and Ireland to be examined at Goldsmith Festival

Published: Wed 24 May 2023, 2:17 PM

Last updated: Wed 24 May 2023, 3:58 PM

Claire McCormack

Historian Professor Diarmaid Ferriter is set to be one of the star attractions at the Oliver Goldsmith Literary Festival in the midlands next month. The organisers also unveiled that this year’s festival theme is ‘Citizens of the World’: Ireland’s Emigrants and Immigrants, at a well-attended launch ceremony in Athlone last Thursday.

Prof Ferriter, Modern Irish History at University College Dublin, whose recent works include Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War (2021) and The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics (2019) – will provide a keynote address titled ‘There are People Dreaming’: Emigration and Modern Irish History, at the opening night in The Rustic Inn, Abbeyshrule.

Ambassador of Poland to Ireland, Anna Sochańska, will officially inaugurate the 39th annual event celebrating the iconic local novelist and playwright, and proceedings will be be chaired by former RTÉ midlands correspondent Ciarán Mullooly.

Goldsmith Festival 2023 speakers at the launch of this year’s event in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel, Athlone – Bernie Comaskey (Westmeath Examiner columnist), Uruemu Adejinmi, Claire Kenny and Donal O’Brien.

The three-day event (June 2-4) at venues in Abbeyshrule, Ballymahon and Tang will also include other foremost thinkers whose work resonates with this year’s theme such as Dr Liam Chambers, head of the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, who will talk on ‘The Irish in Europe in the Age of Goldsmith’, and Liam O’Dwyer of the Irish Red Cross, who will present a session titled ‘Migration, the Future Shrouded in a Crisis’.

There will be contributions by Kensika Monshengwo of the Immigration Council of Ireland, on ‘Intercultural Competency’, and Longford Fianna Fáil councillor Uruemu Adejinmi, the first black female African mayor to be elected in Ireland, on ‘My Nigerian Irish Heritage’.

Eoin Farrell, Aisling Goff, Donall Mac An Bheatha, actor Tony Tiernan, Emma Cassutti, and Arthur Conlon.

Former Labour TD for Longford Westmeath Willie Penrose and Goldsmith scholar, Professor Michael Griffin of the University of Limerick, will also contribute to proceedings over the bank holiday weekend.

Actor Michael J Ford of Dead Still and RTÉ legal drama Striking Out will make a return to the programme to deliver a dramatic composition called ‘Goldsmith The Glory Years’ in Skelly’s Courtyard, while award-winning poets Mary Melvin Geoghegan and Gerard Smyth, poetry editor at The Irish Times, will again adjudicate the Goldsmith Poetry Competition at Pallas.

The Sunday Miscellany event in Goldsmith Library will feature Bernie Comaskey, Donal O’Brien, Dr Don Duncan, Paul Timoney, and Claire Kenny, and music will be performed throughout the festival by the Innyside singers, Simply Strings, Darya Ostapenko, Slawomir Debski, and Tony Dunne and friends.

Arthur Conlon, chairman of the Goldsmith Festival, said: "Our event is about promoting interest in the life and works of Oliver Goldsmith, and we do this by looking at contemporary topics through the eyes of Goldsmith’s writings. We certainly have a topical theme for 2023, emigration and immigration, an issue that has been at the fore of our news recently.

"Festivals like ours are not possible without support and I would like to commend our local county councils, arts offices and libraries who, since the Covid pandemic, have recognised the benefits of investment in social cohesion. We are also very grateful to Nally Bros, Ballymahon for sponsoring our poetry competition."

• olivergoldsmithfestival.com/