Ulster writers celebrated at event in Fivemiletown library

A FASCINATING exploration of linguistic diversity across Ulster through its famed wordsmiths was the theme of a special one-day event which took place at Fivemiletown Library.

Supported by Mid Ulster Council, the well-attended ‘Ulster Voices’ was hosted by the William Carleton Society in conjunction with Libraries NI and featured a number of guest speakers, an intriguing panel discussion and refreshments.

The first talk, ‘Carleton the novelist, seen through the eyes of Benedict Kiely’ was presented by Paul Clements of Augher. A former BBC journalist, to-date Paul has written two biographies and contributed an introduction to ‘A Benedict Kiely Reader’, which released in 2024.

The second speaker, Shaun O’Byrne gave a talk titled ‘A Sense of Place’ which examined how Patrick Kavanagh and William Carleton both used ‘place’ in their literature to capture habits, manners of life and idioms of speech of the rural Irish population in their native Ulster.

The parish where Mr Byrne lives on the Louth/Monaghan border is an area Carleton is thought to have lived in around 1817, shortly after the arson and murder attack at Wildgoose Lodge in which an entire family was burned out by Ribbonmen. These tragic events lead Carleton to write a story about it many years later.

The afternoon session focused upon links between Carleton and another well-known Tyrone figure, the ‘Bard of Tyrone’ and Presbyterian minister Reverend William Forbes Marshall from Sixmilecross.

Interested in the life and works of Marshall, Tyrone native William Anderson’s talk delved into ‘The Trails of two Williams’, referring to the Carleton Trail in the Clogher Valley and the W.F. Marshall Trail in Sixmilecross.

The event was brought to a close with various members of the William Carleton Society committee taking part in an insightful panel discussion on ‘Carleton Connections’.