A special day for Yeats – now in its sixth year

YEATS Day, June 13th is the sixth annual celebration of the birthday of one of Ireland’s finest poets. Yeats’ long and strong association with Sligo is well known and this event brings Yeats works into the open and shares the glory of his writing with a wide audience. This year’s celebrations are supported by the Western Development Commission and Failte Ireland, in association with Sligo County Council and the Yeats Society.

This year’s one- day event will centre on poetry, with readings at the Yeats Society, Sligo Library, Hargadons Pub, Drumcliffe and The Factory. Yeats wrote poetry all his long life, writing some of his finest poems in the last five years of his life. The well- known and familiar lyric poetry has featured in school books, anthologies and collections for decades and are much- loved and recited. Of course, there are many other fine poems in the Nobel Laureate’s many collections and, on Yeats Day, we hope that we will hear both the familiar and the new.

So whether you are eating, drinking, walking or remembering Yeats in his burial place at Drumcliffe, you will find poetry everywhere on this special day. There will be cake on O’Connell St and a mad hatter’s tea party at Heart’s Desire café and Paula Lahiff will also launch her new book From India to Ithaca at the Yeats Society.

The visual delight of the day will be the official opening of the Crazy Jane exhibition at the Hamilton Gallery on Castle St at 5pm. Yeats wrote the Crazy Jane series of poems in 1933, as part of the Dialogue between self and soul and the Hamilton has invited 90 artists to respond to the poems for this very special exhibition. Special guest will be WB Yeats’ granddaughter Caitriona Yeats, a regular visitor to Yeats Day and Sligo and the exhibition will be opened by Professor Sean Golden of the University of Barcelona. www. yeatsday. com & www. hamiltongallery. ie