W.B.Yeats
October 21, 2020 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
Join Garry Hynes, James Pethica, Joseph Hassett, and Ronnie O'Gorman for discussion of Lady Gregory and Yeats: with song from Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill.
Due to COVID-19 and government health restrictions this year's programme of events was streamlined, and is viewable here for remote audiences.
Now available below!
Or see Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering 2020: youtube
Hosted by Ronnie O'Gorman (Galway Advertiser)
James Pethica (Williams College) on All This Mine Alone – the New York Public Library Exhibition curated by Professor Pethica with Colm Toibin.
with poetry readings, and music from renowned singer Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill
For more see interviews with Druid cast and Irish Times review for DruidGregory's 2020 events.
For more on the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering and its annual programme of events see the website autumngathering.ie
Augusta, Lady Gregory, by John Butler Yeats
September 29, 2020 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
Coole Culture
What is the Stars
An outdoor concert at Coole Park honouring the 200th birthday of the Royal Astronomical Society and the celestial spirits of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Augusta, Lady Gregory with world premieres of newly commissioned pieces. Featuring David Brophy and the Coole Park Band.
Play on website or stream on vimeo
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" Psalm 19.1.
with conductor David Brophy (Choir of Ages, High Hopes) and the Coole Park Band
Presented by the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering and Coole Culture.
Due to COVID-19 and government health restrictions this year's programme of events were streamlined, and indeed streamed and recorded for remote audiences, as well as available live to select invited guests. For more on the gathering's annual events visit:
September 24, 2020 September 25, 2020 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
Thoor Ballylee blooms for Yeats's birthday
June 10, 2020 June 13, 2020 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
Every year a Poet's Picnic is held in celebration of the birthday of WB Yeats. This year is no different. On afternoon of Saturday 13 June 2020 from 2 pm, the poet's tower in Galway hosts a video event of poetry, music, and memories. This is the first in a series of events held all summer long at Thoor Ballylee, as the tower opens virtually and for outdoor visitors in compliance with COVID-19 restrictions.
WB Yeats Poet's Picnic 2pm 13 June 2020
Visit Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society Facebook Page
Livestream on
https://www.facebook.com/yeatsthoorballylee/live/
We are delighted to say the waters have long gone, our volunteers and staff have removed all sand bags, tidied away all flotsam, and the gardens are thriving: these are all recent photographs! Though due to current restrictions we have not been yet allowed inside, the grounds are spectacular for visitors. And this weekend Thoor Ballylee blooms again to celebrate the 155th birthday of WB Yeats.
First, a reminder of our story.
WB Yeats bought the old Norman tower at Ballylee for a song in 1916, and had it renovated by local builder Michael Rafferty under the direction of architect William A. Scott, with whom Yeats had a lively relationship, describing him on one occasion as a 'drunken genius'. With its attached thatched cottage it became a comfortable summer home for his wife George and their two children, Michael and Anne, and the Yeats family returned year after year.
Living there inspired Yeats to write some of his best poetry. Fruits of this work were published in two volumes considered by critics among his best: The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1933). They contain such poems as 'The Tower', 'Meditations in Time of Civil War', 'Coole Park 1929', 'Blood and the Moon', and many others, some featured in this weekend's birthday celebrations.
The Winding Stair (1933) cover by Thomas Sturge Moore
The tower, which Yeats named Thoor Ballylee, fell into disrepair after the poet's death in 1939. It was given by the children of the poet to Board Failte, who opened it as a tourist information office, while offering tours showing its extraordinary literary heritage.
Built by the de Burgo family in the 14th century as a Hiberno-Norman stronghold, the tower stands beside the Streamstown River and is subject to sporadic winter flooding. It truly is a livestream: the floods have been severe in recent years, so in 2009 the tower was shut by Failte Ireland who decided that it was no longer economically viable. It remained closed until a group of volunteers, with the grand-sounding name of Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, appealed to Failte Ireland to let them re-open the Tower as a visitor centre once again. This was granted, and after restoration and repair work the tower was opened with music and song in June 2015, the 150th anniversary of Yeats's birth. Exhibitions, tours, and all kinds of cultural events have attracted thousands of visitors. His birthday has been celebrated there ever since.
This summer, these events are set to continue. Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society continues to adhere to all the COVID-19 guidelines from the Government of Ireland. While this does not currently allow for visitors inside the tower, the Society continues to host special events with social distancing in place in the grounds, by the mill wheel, by the river, and online.
In addition to the Poet's Picnic taking place this Saturday 13 June 2020, there are ambitious plans in the coming year to hold the type of events the tower has become famous for: poetry readings, plays, musical get-togethers, talks of historical, natural, and literary interest, including virtual multimedia tours, talks, and readings from WB Yeats's inspirational home, and from our new studio space dedicated to art and cultural workshops which opened just last year.
This summer the magic of the tower can thus be experienced in a number of ways. The grounds remain open to visitors practising social distancing, while the tower hosts small gatherings for invited attendees, and an exciting series of events broadcast to the world by video or audio link.
To donate to this voluntary group, our webpage yeatsthoorballylee.org has updates, and see also the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society facebook page. Visitors this summer still be able to enjoy the charm of Ballylee, and perhaps agree that it is the perfect place for a poet to rest and write.
Thoor Ballylee year in review
January 27, 2020 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
The last year represents one of our most successful years ever here at Yeats's Tower. The opening of the Studio at Thoor Ballylee represented 2019's biggest achievement, and one that will keep giving for many years to come. With generous support, we completed in double-quick time the conversion of the Yeats family's old garage into a new vibrant space for workshops, events, education, art, and community, further enriching this place full of poetry and creativity.
By October 2019, when the curtain came down on our fifth season open at Thoor Ballylee, an estimated 4, 580 visitors had come and experienced the magic of Yeats's tower. With your help we hope 2020 can be even better! Your continuing support is much appreciated.
The season at Thoor Ballylee opened on Easter Saturday in late April, with spring springing and with tea and Easter Bunny cake kindly provided by our generous and longest serving volunteer, Tonii. This was just the warm up for our regular readings and celebrations for Yeats's birthday party, held every year (with cake!) on or around 13 June.
'Sailing to Byzantium'
Launching the Studio at Thoor Ballylee was our first major event of the season. Guest of honour and speaker of a fine welcoming address was the inimitable Sabina Higgins. Spoken poetry came from poet Mary O Malloy, and was followed by a fluid rendition of 'The Salley Gardens' by soprano, Helen Hancock. Doing the honours of the official opening in cutting the ribbon was our very own esteemed author and educator Sr Mary de Lourdes Fahy.
The exhibition, assembled from materials from our own and NUI Galway's archives, featured women artists like Elizabeth Rivers and especially the work of Elizabeth and Lily Yeats, in arts and crafts, printing and embroidery, after whom the studio is dedicated. Pride of place went to exquisite embroidered banners designed and made by the Yeats family and female workforce at Dun Emer workshop, rarely seen outside their home St Brendan's Cathedral Loughrea, woven under the direction of Lily Yeats and featuring saints designed by Jack B. Yeats and his wife Mary Cottenham Yeats. Presiding over the studio space and presenting an expert weaving demonstration was Kathy Mooney. Later in the year the Studio at Thoor Ballylee was the venue for a day of spinning and weaving, now becoming a very popular annual event.
Elizabeth Rivers, from Stranger in Aran, Cuala Press (1946)
So already the Studio at Thoor Ballylee has been put to good use. Local artist, Cindy Lund, came to reside in there for a week, creating some amazing original work, attracting other artists, giving local children an opportunity to draw in Yeats's garage, while generating great interest in Thoor.
The studio was also the venue for weekly evening classes with Jackie Quelly, a lecture on Maud Gonne's Men, by Anthony J. Jordan, an embroidery workshop with Sandra from Sacra King Irish Fibre Crafters and an exhibition and various artistic activities by the wonderful Kinvara Sanctuary group. Later as part of the Yeats Lady Gregory Autumn gathering Marina Carr came to give an expert playwrighting workshop here.
Marion Cox in conversation with Marina Carr
We are indeed indebted to Denis Creaven, from the Institute of Education, who has faithfully, year after year, given his two day mid-term lectures to Leaving Cert students, free gratis, with all proceeds going to Thoor Ballylee.
The mill by the river, on a sunny summer's day in June, was the setting for a joint recital by Coole Music and an incredible youth orchestra from Norway, conducted by Katherina Baker. Two weeks later we were treated to an afternoon of medieval music by the junior members of Coole Music, fittingly attired in medieval costumes, performing in our medieval tower house.
To mark Heritage week, field archaeologist Dr Christy Cunniffe gave a talk and presentation on vernacular houses. Anna O Donnell gave an fascinating demonstration on the story of butter and butter making while soprano Helen Hancock delighted us with an evening of opera and the story of song. On Culture Night two rare performances occurred at Thoor of Yeats's and Augusta Gregory's The Pot of Broth by a pioneering local theatre group. This was followed by Anna O Donnell's own broth tasting, and with Lelia Doolan's insights into the family life of the Yeatses, audiences went away fully satisfied.
In September we were, once again, honoured to host The Lady Gregory and Yeats Autumn Gathering, and the studio and tower was the host for important sessions on women's writing and creativity. As noted, internationally renowned playwright Marina Carr with Head of Drama at Trinity College, Dublin, Melissa Sihra, conducted a workshop for playwrights in the studio. Film producer Lelia Doolan gave an enlightening lecture on the actress and artistic director Ria Mooney and the Abbey Theatre, while the local Wild Swan Theatre group brought the weekend to a close with their premiere production of a new play, Lady Gregory's Ingredients.
World renowned storyteller, Martin Shaw (Cista Mystica) chose Thoor Ballylee as the Irish venue for his sold-out story telling workshop and evening performance. This event attracted participants from as far afield as Germany and New Zealand, and proved a most successful event in terms of enjoyment and publicity. A film made by Grant Thompson around the event with Martin Shaw at Thoor Ballylee discussing Yeats was featured on social media and widely viewed.
Thoor Ballylee ended the year as it began as a hub for the arts and for community: the many musical events in the series included expert local group The Burren Bandits while Máirtín O Connor, Garry O Brien and singer Mary McPartlan brought another busy season to a close.
Thoor Ballylee would like to give thanks for the generosity of our amazing 2019 volunteers: Rosemary, Rose, Tonii, Karen, Liam, Gus, Pat O Looney, Pat Farrell.For their never-ending help, our Tús members: Khrystof , Dominic, Joe, and Frank (CE scheme). To JJ and family members for manning the car park, controlling the traffic, lighting our way in the dark and helping where needed. And to our never-failing staff Eoghan MacDonagh and the dedicated Nichola.
All this hard work, dedication, and passion for W.B. Yeats, for Thoor Ballylee, and for the arts and Galway culture, was fittingly rewarded in when we were awarded the prestigious Cathaoirleach's (Mayor's) Award for Arts and Culture 2019.
Marion Cox, Rena McAllen, Colm Farrell, Anna O Donnell, Lelia Doolan of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society
All this, and we couldn't have done it all without you! Despite our recent success in winning a competitive Government of Ireland grant to help open the studio, we rely entirely on volunteers and private donations to keep going, and making sure Yeats's legacy is preserved and open for worldwide visitors and new generations. Please come and visit us in the new season, and if you can become a friend or donate to our fund!
Grand Season Closing Concert
Come and celebrate our 2019 season with a grand Yeatsian evening of poetry, music, song, and stories.
And enjoy of course the warm hospitality of our Thoor hosts, and the chance to ascend the tower one last time in 2019.
Grand Season Closing Concert at Thoor Ballylee
Máirtín O'Connor and Garry O'Briain
Mary McPartlan
A grand Yeatsian evening of music, song, & stories featuring box, guitar, and singing
Saturday 19th October 8pm
Tickets 15 euro
Call 0858620935 or email
yeatsthoorballyleesociety@gmail.com
Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering
THE LADY GREGORY–YEATS AUTUMN GATHERING
Friday 27- Sunday 29 September 2019
Join the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering and discover more about our rich literary heritage in Galway, especially at Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee.
This year the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering features a playwriting workshop with Marina Carr and Melissa Sihra and includes exclusive talks from guest speakers, drama, film from the archives, and plenty of chat and socialising.
Playwright Marina Carr in rehearsal
To mark the 25th anniversary of the annual Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering at Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee, playwright Marina Carr and academic Melissa Sihra, conduct a playwriting workshop at Thoor Ballylee. Join one of Ireland's greatest living dramatists for this unique opportunity. This workshop will take place in The Studio at Thoor Ballylee on Friday 27 September from 2pm to 5pm. To join this exclusive event email monaleen@msn.com – playwrights are invited to submit a one-page monologue in advance and places are limited.
Further highlights include:
Book launch: Marina Carr: Pastures of the Unknown, by Melissa Sihra
Cutting of the Gort Barm Brack by Lady Gregory's great, great grandson, Robin Murray Brown
Women, Anxiety and Resistance in Fairy Legends Collected by Lady Gregory with Lucy McDiarmid
Patronage and Friendship: Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats with Nicholas Grene
The Making of a Drama: Lady Gregory 1908-1910 with Anthony Roche
Other Women Pioneers at the Abbey with Lelia Doolan
Augusta in America: Lady Gregory finds a new audience, new voice and fresh sphere of influence in the New World with Cecily O'Neill
Lady G: screening of Carolyn Swift's one-woman Abbey Theatre performance, with Barry Houlihan
'Lady Gregory's Ingredients' short drama play which takes place at Thoor Ballylee, Yeats's castle home.
Plus entertainment and candlelit dinner amidst the woodland of Coole Park!
Please see www.autumngathering.com for more details.
Culture Night at Thoor: The Pot of Broth
The Pot of Broth
A short play by W. B. Yeats and Augusta Gregory is our featured event for Culture Night at Thoor Ballylee.
The Pot of Broth was premiered in Dublin in 1902 at the Irish National Theatre even before it became the Abbey Theatre. Yeats called it a 'little farce', but it pioneered the use of local dialect speech foreshadowing the later comedies of Gregory and J.M. Synge – and some of the comic relief of Yeats's tragedies. This taut and tightly-worked piece is directed by Anthony Hall and presented by a local theatre group in its first ever performance at Thoor Ballylee, alongside a short talk about the early Abbey Theatre and some real pots of delicious home-cooked broth for the audience.
Drop in for Culture Night Friday 20th September for any of two performances at 7.15pm and 8.15pm – stay and enjoy our exhibitions, climb the tower in the setting sun, and consume our hospitable home-made broth!
Sanctuary Event at Thoor Ballylee
Writers and artists invite public to discover for themselves at interactive exhibit at Thoor Ballylee
A collective of eight poets, writers and visual artists from County Galwaypresent their original works on the theme of sanctuary at a one-day exhibit on Sunday, September 15th, 2019 from noon at the Studio at Thoor Ballylee, outside Gort. The event, The Roots of Your Refuge, will be free and open to the public, and offered rain or shine. Light refreshments will be served.
Conceived by poet, educator, and psychotherapist Aoife Reilly, the exhibition is the culmination of a five-month exploration of what sanctuary means in the natural and modern worlds. It consists of readings of poetry and prose, interactive exhibits, writing exercises, guided meditations, and artworks displayed in the Studio and surrounding woods. Each element was created specifically for this event.
Works will be arranged along a trail, with contributions from each artist and writer presented over the course of the afternoon. Visitors are invited to enjoy the part indoor, part outdoor event in this peaceful wooded setting where they can take in words and images, contribute their own, and tap into what sanctuary means to them.
"This has been a rare opportunity to delve deeply into the age-old need for sanctuary, and set our imaginations free in a beloved natural environment," said artist Aisling O'Leary, one of the project's contributors. "For many people, sanctuary is an internal place, but one we arrive at most easily by tapping into nature."
The grounds and medieval tower house at Thoor Ballylee were a place of sanctuary and inspiration for the poet W.B. Yeats, Nobel laureate for Literature, who spent summers there with his family before and during the Irish Civil War. The curated site attracts visitors from around the world for its serenity and rich history, offering them a place to explore what poet Reilly calls "the sanctity of green/ when you're shaken to the bone."
Maud Gonne & Yeats talk
July 11, 2019 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
This weekend at Thoor Ballylee, columnist and author Anthony J. Jordan gives us his views on an interesting and controversial topic.
Maud Gonne's Men
Anthony J. Jordan
3pm Saturday 13th July 2019
Biographer of Arthur Griffith, W.T. Cosgrave and Sean MacBride, Anthony J. Jordan is a native of Ballyhuinis, Co. Mayo, educated at NUI Maynooth, UCD, and St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He has wide interests in Irish culture and politics, and in particular the complicated repatriation of the bodies of Irish writers like W. B. Yeats and James Joyce.
His talk this weekend delves into the thorny thickets of Maud Gonne's life, loves, and nationalist activities following his own book on the topic (see above). Gonne's long affair with the right-wing French nationalist Lucien Millevoye produced two children, one who would die tragically young, and an agreement to take on the British Empire in any form. This entanglement overlapped with her spiritual marriage with W.B. Yeats, and prefigured a disastrous marriage with the revolutionary John MacBride which ended with abuse allegations and a fraught separation case. Even then after his execution in 1916 she wore black in honour of a man who Yeats's 'Easter 1916' says he 'dreamed / A drunken vainglorious lout'. Amid renewed interest in the subject stimulated by new work such as Adrian Frazier's The Adulterous Muse: Maud Gonne, Lucien Millevoye and W.B. Yeats (Lilliput, 2016), Anthony J. Jordan gives us his considered opinion and answers questions.
Join us for an engrossing talk, a cup of tea, and a unique view of Yeats's tower.
Yeats's birthday celebrations
June 13, 2019 / thebicyclops	/ Leave a comment
W.B. Yeats was born on the 13th June 1865: on this day in 2019 that makes him a notional 154 years young, entering his 155th year. Though he complained loudly in verse about old age he did so from a very young age – and when approaching seniority retained a youthful vigour. Young, old, and somewhere in between gathered in Thoor Ballylee to read poems, sing songs, and share birthday cake for the grand old ever-young poet.
Rena McAllen, Tiana Fischer, Stephen O'Neill, and Melinda Szüts
Poems written early and late in life, from 'Down By the Salley Gardens' and 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' to 'The Tower' and 'Blood and the Moon' were sung or read out loud (the way Yeats believed poetry should be performed) at our newly opened studio.
Colm Farrell and the Doolan family: Lelia Doolan about to read
Poems were read putting blessings on the tower, and expressing a wish to leave the country, or the body: "That is no country for old men", declares 'Sailing to Byzantium'. With the young jackdaws nesting in the tower having just flown their nest, reading 'The Stare's Nest By My Window' from 'Meditations in Time of Civil War' was particularly poignant.
'The Stare's Nest By My Window'
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war:
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
The Nobel prize medal for Literature he won pictured a young fellow listening to a beautiful muse. "I was good-looking once like that young man", exclaimed Yeats, "but my unpractised verse was full of infirmity, my Muse old as it were. Now I am old and rheumatic, and nothing to look at, but my Muse is young."
A horse joins the celebrations
In celebration this piece of music and reading by Ciaran Cannon features recent footage of Thoor Ballylee.
When You Are Old – WB Yeats from Ciaran Cannon on Vimeo.
Melinda Szüts reads from the opening song of the play 'The Only Jealousy of Emer'.
Happy Birthday to W.B. Yeats from all at Thoor Ballylee, County Galway!