Sligo is a town of 18,000 people on the North West seaboard of Ireland which enjoys a world-wide reputation that larger and more strategically placed cities envy. This is due to its unique connection with possibly the most popular English language poet of the 20th century, W. B. Yeats.

Actually, he wasn't born there, and nor did he live there for any extended period. He was born in Dublin in 1865 and when he bought a house for his wife George, he chose to do so in Galway. However, through his mother Susan, he absorbed her consuming passion for her native Sligo; long periods of his childhood were spent there and the shy, sensitive, seemingly backward boy (he couldn't read until he was nine - and never really learned to spell) looked, listened and absorbed through his senses the beauty, magic and myths of Sligo. Places like Drumcliff, Inisfree Island, Benbulben, Knocknarea, Glencar, Rosses Point, Cummeen and many other places in this county he named in his works. Whatever he wrote, as with his brother Jack in his paintings, had something of Sligo in it.

Yeats Building with Summer School Banner

In 1959, a small group of Sligo citizens met in a room in the local library with the objective of forming an organisation to honour the poet they felt belonged to Sligo. With a donation of five shillings each they founded the Yeats Society. Now with thirty shillings (about $2 US dollars) in hand, where next?

Well, luckily the great Professor Tom Henn of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge was a regular visitor to Sligo. When members of the newly formed society approached him and asked his opinion on how best to honour the poet, his reply was "Hold a Summer School ". He was very specific about the kind of school he envisaged; he saw it as a two- week mini-university, with lectures and seminars of the highest academic standards. He was adamant that it should not be affiliated to any recognised University and that it should create its own universality with Yeats's works at its core, but extending to related topics to do with Anglo-Irish Literature, such as Celtic mythology, Japanese Drama, and other relevant themes. After 50 years, that still remains the basic Yeats Summer School ethos. Students come from all over the world each August to Sligo - and what a journey many of them make! - from every continent in the world (and particularly from the USA and Britain) to Dublin and from there to Sligo.

All ages are represented - young Oxford undergraduates, retired American attorneys, serious doctoral students, policemen, teachers, housewives and many poets, all with one thing in common - a desire to see the countryside that inspired Yeats and to learn more about the poet and his family in the place that inspired him and the place where he very definitely chose as his final resting place. As the poet wrote of his beloved Sligo:

"I longed for a sod of earth from some field I knew, something of Sligo to hold in my hand. It was some old race instinct like that of a savage, for we had been brought up to laugh at all display of emotion. Yet it was our mother, who would have thought its display a vulgarity, who kept alive that love" (Reveries over Childhood and Youth)

There is a special sub-committee of the Yeats Society which is responsible for organising the school at local level - finding accommodation for the 150 or so students and lecturers, arranging receptions, venues, seminar rooms, printing brochures and programmes, and above all, working within a budget. We greatly value the sponsorship given by generous Sligo citizens, and the funds contributed that allow us to offer a limited number of scholarships to needy students. Applicants need to submit a letter of recommendation from their University when applying for a Tuition Scholarship.

We endeavour to fund those places by fundraising, by individual or corporate sponsors, and by grants from certain universities.

It's a battle we face every year and each year we make ends meet - just about!

When the founding fathers of the Yeats Society started the Yeats International Summer School I'm sure in their wildest imagination they didn't see it as lasting for 50 years. Well, it has done so. And we hope it will continue well into the foreseeable future.

Maura McTighe
Chair of Schools Committee