The castle home of WB Yeats was the location for the launch of a major new poetry competition to mark the 100th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the renowned Irish poet.
The Poetry Prize is an initiative of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, which is the custodian of the poet’s medieval tower house, near Gort, in Co Galway.
Anna O’Donnell, chairperson of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, says it is an exciting year for Thoor Ballylee with the centenary of Yeats winning the Nobel Prize.
"With the kind assistance of Creative Ireland, we are celebrating the occasion by launching the inaugural Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize.
“We are inviting poets, not just from Ireland, but from all over the world to celebrate with us, by sharing their work, and connecting with this magical place where Yeats spent some of the happiest and most creative years of his life.”
Details about the Poetry Prize can be found on the Yeats Thoor Ballylee website athttps://yeatsthoorballylee.org/yeats-thoor-ballylee-international-poetry-prize/. Poems must be submitted online at https://www.zealous.co/thoorballylee/opportunity/Yeats-Centenary-Poetry-Competition/.
Poets have until August 18 to make submissions, and this year’s judge, poet Mary Madec, will determine first, second and third place. Madec was the recipient of the Hennessy XO Prize for Emerging Poetry in 2008 and has published several collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry. She was recently awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary for producing her next book.
As well as launching the Poetry Prize, the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society has other events planned for this historic year at the tower.
“There will be concerts and lectures to mark the centenary as well as a specially commissioned play about the poet called ‘Nobel Words’, ” says O’Donnell. These events will be announced over the summer.
But for now, the custodians of Yeats Tower are hoping to generate a flood of entries for the Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize. Film-maker and Thoor Ballylee Society board member Lelia Doolan hopes aspiring poets from around the world will be moved to write new poetry just as Yeats himself was by the power of the place.
“Yeats wrote these lines…’I am of late, feeling greatly inspired within the walls of an old tower house that I own in the West of Ireland - Thoor Ballylee’…and so we feel very happy to be launching this annual Poetry Prize from his old home, to commemorate his enduring, vivid legacy and to offer an invitation to poets worldwide to connect, through their work, with this wonderful place.”
