Photo: Leo Scarff Design
ENNIS is headquarters for Merriman Summer School 2015, operating out of glór arts venue in the town centre from August 12 to Saturday 15.
Catherine McGuinness, the former Supreme Court judge, will open events on Wednesday 12 at 7pm, reflecting on some of the ways in which Irish society has redefined love and marriage in recent decades.
Thereafter days fill with lectures, seminars, concerts, poetry readings, interviews and informal gatherings. Among those addressing the school will be historian Roy Foster, Lucy McDiarmid, Tom Inglis, Patricia Coughlan, Conor O’Mahony, Carol Coulter, the author Donal Ryan, and poets Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Rita Ann Higgins and Doireann Ní Ghríofa.
Performances and debates to concern the last 20 years of divorce in Ireland, love and marriage in the 1916 Rising, sexual citizenship, same sex marriage, women’s lives, marriage traditions and love and intimacy in Irish writing.
The Summer School will close with a History Ireland ‘Hedge School’ on ‘Love and Marriage since the Famine.’
This year’s director is Dr Linda Connolly of the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century in UCC. Her publications include work on Irish feminism, social movements and family life.
www.glor.ie for tickets per event or the full shebang; website www.merriman.ie for programme.
