Local resident Thomas Kinsella, poet, translator, editor and publisher will be honoured with the freedom of the city later this year.

Recognised internationally as one of the great Irish poets of his generation, Kinsella, pictured above, is spoken of in the same breath as Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke and Seamus Heaney. He has earned great distinction and critical acclaim as Ireland’s great ‘Urban Poet’.

The poet was born in Inchicore in 1928. He was educated at O’Connell schools and then UCD. He was a civil servant for nearly 20 years in the department of finance.

In 1965 he became writer in residence at The University of Southern Illinois before taking up the position of professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia. He returned to live in Percy Place in Dublin.

In the title poem of ‘Night Walker and other Poems’ (1968) he wrote one of the most significant Irish works of the second half of the twentieth century. It ostensibly records the journey of the narrator as he moves through familiar south County Dublin suburbs, in effect the poem charts the substantial religious, cultural, and political changes that have taken place in post-independence Ireland from the 1920s to the mid 1960s.

In the early 1970s Kinsella decided to found his own press, The Pepper Canister Press, from which most of his subsequent works have been issued.

He is well-known as a translator of manuscripts from Irish into English. His version of ‘The Tain’ is a landmark publication and is Ireland’s nearest approach to a great epic. ‘The Tain’ (Cattle Raids) is an eighth century legend detailing the route from Rathcroghan, Co.

Roscommon to the Cooley Peninsula Co. Louth and follows the epic story of Queen Maeve ofConnacht and her attempt to capture the famous brown bull of Cooley (Tain bó Cuailnge). When the two bulls met, they killed each other.

A sculpture of the event, shown above, adorns the wall of the main entrance to the College of Technology, Kevin Street and was presented to the College on long-term loan by the Gresham Hotel. The sculpture is by John Behan and was unveiled by President Patrick J Hillery on 10th of October 1987.