The Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize has been launched at the iconic south Galway tower house to mark the centenary of WB Yeats’ Nobel Prize for Literature.
The major new poetry competition is one of a series of events taking place at Thoor Ballylee as part of the centenary celebratrions.
WB Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
The poetry prize is an initiative of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, who are custodians of the poet’s former home near Gort.
“This is an exciting year for Thoor Ballylee as it is the centenary of Yeats winning the Nobel Prize,” said said Anna O’Donnell, chairperson of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society. “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.”
Film-maker and Thoor Ballylee Society board member Lelia Doolan hopes that 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,” she said.
Details about the poetry prize can be found on the Yeats Thoor Ballylee website at yeatsthoorballylee.org
Poems must be submitted online at 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 have 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,” Ms O’Donnell added.
Saturday July 15 will see two of these events — a musical and dramatic performance, and a workshop on Ireland’s pollinators — taking place at the tower as part of the centenary programme.
Come Dance With Me In Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country is a musical and dramatic peformance featuring Celtic harpist and storyteller Patrick Ball.
This solo musical theatre piece, based on the life and works of Yeats, is the story of an elderly Irish couple who, having emigrated to America early in their married life, now return to Ireland. The husband had always loved Yeats’ poetry and had known much of it by heart. But now, he is suffering severe memory loss, and those beloved poems are leaving him.
His wife has arranged for them to tour Yeats Country in the hopes of recapturing, if only briefly, some of those swiftly fading memories. They visit the magical landscape of Inishfree, Thoor Ballylee, Glencar, Knocknarea, and Drumcliffe. They hear again some of Yeats’ most beautiful poems — ‘The Lake Isle Of Innisfree’, ‘When You Are Old’, ‘The Song Of Wandering Aengus’, ‘The Host of the Air,’ ‘The Wild Swans At Coole’ — as their own story unfolds.
Come Dance With Me In Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country will be peformed in Thoor Ballylle on Saturday July 15 at 7.30pm. Tickets are €17.50 and can be purchased at www.eventbrite.ie/e/patrick-ball-presents-come-dance-with-me-a-pilgrimage-to-yeats-country-tickets-668158609387
Ealier on Saturday July 15, a workshop focusing on wild pollinators will take place at the medieval tower house, highlighting Yeats’ love of nature.
‘An Introduction to Ireland’s Wild Pollinator Species – Their Decline, Regeneration and Looking to the Past for their Future Survival’ will explore the impact that Ireland’s modern land-use practices have had on our wild pollinator species, and the importance of regenerating traditional land-use practices for their future survival and the most beneficial actions for wild habitats and private gardens.
The workshop, led by Áine Ní Fhlatharta, will explore the co-existence between indigenous wild plants and pollinator species and the vital role that flower-rich habitats, such as meadows and semi-natural grasslands, play in providing pollinators’ year-round requirements, as well as what these requirements are for different pollinator species. It also covers how to become a citizen scientist ,and the role that citizen scientists can play in assessing and tracking the conservation status of a species from year to year.
Practical outdoor sessions will include: pollinator identification in the field; identification of beneficial habitats; how to naturally regenerate semi-natural grasslands; identification of beneficial plant species; and how to monitor bumblebees and butterflies.
The workshop will be held from 10.30am to 4.30pm. Tickets are available at www.eventbrite.ie/e/an-introduction-to-irelands-wild-pollinator-species-tickets-669400734617
