An Introduction to WB Yeats & His Home at Thoor Ballylee Gort, Co Galway.

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. Yeats was awarded the The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923 for his ”always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”.

Yeats spent spent summers with his family at Thoor Ballylee (also known as Yeats Tower) in Gort, County Galway, the fine and well-preserved fourteenth-century tower, and was inspired to write some of his finest poetry here. His name stands as a symbol of the arts, a bit like the ever-changing but always recognisable chestnut tree at the end of his great poem ‘Among School Children‘. Like this tree, the work of Yeats is deeply rooted, strong, creative, and full of beauty.

An Introdution to WB Yeats and his home at Thoor Ballylee has been produced by Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society through the Spot-lit.eu project funded by Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme and with the support of  The Western Development Commission. The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society aims to energize local and international supporters who care about literature and heritage, to foster a collaborative approach among the culture, tourism, business and academic communities.We endeavor to also bring light to the importance of literature and its strong history in the region.

 

‘Among Schoolchildren’ Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989) via https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43293/among-school-children