CURRENT NEWS & EVENTS
The Yeats Trail
The Yeats Society of Sligo have produced a newly-updated pamphlet describing
The Yeats Trail – locations in the
counties Sligo and Galway most prominently associated with the poet and his
family. The new pamphlet was launched by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, on 29
January 2009, the 70th anniversary of the poet’s death (see
The Yeats Trail: Summer School students enjoy the view from Thoor Ballylee
further details of the event in news archive). The Yeats Trail is a joint initiative by
the Yeats Society and Fáilte Ireland, marking the places which Mr. Heaney
described as “the places of silence and solitude” to which Yeats would retreat,
to get away from it all. Heaney further
remarked that: “The
Yeats Passport Trail encourages the tourist to systematically go from place to
place. I have been to all of the places mentioned including Lough Gill, Glencar,
Dromahair, Rosses Point, and Drumcliffe. The actual roll call of names is a lure
for visitors.”
It was noted that Yeats once wrote in a letter that he predicted he would one
day become “a tourist attraction in the region.” A commemorative plaque has
recently been erected at St John’s Cathedral, Sligo, where Yeats’s parents were
married, and where a beautiful stained-glass window commemorates the Pollexfen
family. Other places of interest on the
Yeats Trail include The Yeats Memorial Building, the Model Arts & Niland
Gallery, the Sligo County Museum, Lissadell House, Drumcliffe Church, the
Kiltartan Gregory Museum, Thoor Ballylee, Coole Park and the Writers Museum,
Dublin. A copy of the pamphlet may be
downloaded from this website:
www.discoverireland.ie/Northwest
T.S.Eliot Summer School
Ronald Schuchard
We are delighted to announce that Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University, a former Director of the Yeats Summer School, will direct the inaugural T.S.Eliot Summer School in London this year. The Yeats Society wish him success with this enterprise. Ron will have a busy summer since he will also be spending a week at the Yeats Summer School, where he will give a seminar on Yeats’s early poetry.
Seamus Heaney Reading in Sligo, 27 July
Seamus Heaney
Nobody in Ireland will have failed to notice that Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney celebrated his 70th birthday in April of this year. The Yeats Society wish Seamus a very happy birthday year. Please join us on Monday 27 July for what promises to be a momentous event when he gives a poetry reading at the Yeats summer school, at the Hawk’s Well Theatre. Once called ”the greatest Irish poet since Yeats,” Seamus Heaney has visited the Yeats summer school regularly and often, and much of his critical work over the years has been dedicated to the elder poet’s work. See RTE’s website to recognize Heaney’s birthday: http://www.rte.ie/heaneyat70/
New Poem for 50th Summer School
Bernard O’Donoghue
Faber poet Bernard O’Donoghue has written a poem in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Yeats Summer School, which will be printed by the King Library Press in a signed, limited edition broadside and will be available at this year’s summer school. Titled ”The Ascent of Ben Bulben,” the poem is dedicated to George Watson (1942-2009), former director of the school, who died on 2nd February of this year. George was a brilliant and charismatic teacher and scholar, and a great friend of many people associated with the school. He will be sadly missed. Bernard O’Donoghue will read from his poems at the school on Tuesday 28th July, with Gerald Dawe.
| 
