YEATS SOCIETY AIMS TO BRING POET’S MAGIC TO A NEW AUDIENCE
The Yeats Society Sligo is almost 60 years old. With a new board and a new director, the Society is preparing to tell the story of WB Yeats and his extraordinarily creative and gifted family for 21st century audiences. The Society was set up in 1960, just 21 years after Yeats’ body was brought back from the south of France to be buried, as he had wished, ‘Under Bare Ben Bulben’s head.’ He was Ireland’s first Nobel poet, he was revered and his place in history was secure by then. At that moment, the Society understood the importance of commemorating Yeats’ work for generations to come. They set about drawing academics from across the world to Sligo to talk, read and recite Yeats, ensuring that his work remained vibrant and relevant. Importantly, the Society also understood that Yeats’ strong spiritual and inspirational links with Sligo were worth celebrating.
However, at that time, Yeats was perceived as being different and somehow strange; his Protestant roots were consistently frowned upon by an educational system rooted almost entirely in the Catholic ethos. Schoolteachers avoided mentioning aspects of his life; his religion, the many women he knew and loved, his interest in the occult and his support for divorce. They taught poetry, but not the poet. One hundred and one years after Irish independence seems the right time to rexamine the man; his family, his passions, his follies and above all his extraordinary body of work as a poet, writer, dramatist, designer, producer, theatre manager and senator. The Society will continue its grand tradition of celebrating the work of Yeats, by opening its doors and celebrating the work of those poets and writers who have followed on the heels of this great national poet and who have been inspired by him.