Done with his wandering, poet Anthony Cronin who was born in Enniscorthy has made Irishtown in Dublin his home.
Anthony Cronin has chosen Irishtown in Dublin as his home after many years of living abroad. He has a deep appreciation for the people and the place,
It’s a real community in fact, which is getting very rare these days.
Life began for Anthony Cronin in Enniscorthy County Wexford in 1928, and fifty years later he is enjoying a growing reputation as,
"A somewhat acerbic philosopher, an anti-literary establishment man, an outsider, probably by choice, if not by nature."
At Ardamine Beach near Courtown, where his family had a holiday chalet, he muses on the idea of literary exile, and rejects the notion that a writer must portray themselves as someone rooted in the Irish countryside of their forbears,
I have no sense of ancestral rootedness, other than in Ireland in general.
Content that his wandering days have ended, a changed Ireland presents new challenges for Anthony Cronin, and also for younger writers, if they return. The idea of exile is out of date, he maintains,
Everybody’s presence is important. Places are duller and poorer for the absence of anybody, not just us.
This episode of ‘A Personal Account’ was broadcast on 11 October 1974. The reporter is Patrick Gallagher.