About Yeats Day

Sligo's sixth annual celebration of its Nobel Laureate takes place on the poets birthday June 13th

This years programme is crammed full of celebratory events throughout the town. There’ll be poetry in abundance in church yards and pubs, there will be music, visual arts and of course the traditional cutting of a massive birthday cake in O’Connell street by “The Giant of Literature” himself, a 25ft street puppet creation by Cillian Rodgers. The cake cutting takes place at 1.15pm outside Hargadons Pub following the lunchtime poetry reading there.

Amongst the other highlight events are “Yeats with Dermot Bolger” in The Factory Performance Space at 8 pm and the launch of “Crazy Jane”, an exhibition in Hamilton Gallery. This annual invited artists exhibition themed on Yeats’ poetry features work by 90 contemporary Irish artists. The annual Nora Niland / Yeats Day Lecture will be given by Professor Sean Golden. It’s title is ‘One a Gazelle; the Eva Gore-Booth that Yeats never knew’.

W B doesn’t get all the limelight on Yeats day. Sligo also pays tribute to his influential siblings. There will be a guided tour of the Niland collection of Jack Yeats paintings at the model. Yeats day also sees the launch of the 7th Craftfest Northwest, (Lily Lolly Craft festival) which was inspired by the seminal role Susan and Elizabeth Yeats played in the revival of Irish craft in the last century.

A really special event Yeats Choral In The Garden sees students of the Eily Kilgannon School of Theatre and younger children from the Ann Carton Creche perform works by Yeats at Sligo Central Library Garden at 12 noon.

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