Search Results for 'Yeats Tower'

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.

In what must be the ultimate irony in the compelling story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and their brief, but significant visit to Connemara in September 1962, it was Hughes who returned to find solace and peace there. Sylvia had planned to return that autumn, instead she found, what she thought was a refuge in the former home of WB Yeats in London, and despite the onset of severe depression, remained there to write her best poems. It would probably have saved her life if she had taken up the rented cottage she had paid a deposit for, between Cleggan and Moyard. Instead in London she battled against a bitter cold winter, ‘flu, frozen pipes, and minding her two small children while writing furiously most of the night.

If Sylvia Plath was hoping for some kind of rapprochement between herself and her husband Ted Hughes during their brief stay with the late Richard Murphy at Cleggan, Co Galway, in September 1962, she was to be quickly disillusioned. In fact she would be abandoned, and plunged into despair. Yet following a visit to Coole Park, and Thoor Ballylee, Sylvia was to take away a spiritual connection with the poet WB Yeats, and a feeling of peace in the tragic build up to her suicide some five months later.

Dear Aurelia, It has not been possible for me to write this letter before now...

Aspiring poets are asked to answer the call of Yeats this weekend at the Thoor Closing Night at the Yeats Tower in Gort and to read their poems at the usually lively event.

Week V

Week IV

Following the recent flooding of Yeat’s tower and cottage at Thoor Ballylee, a number of Galway musicians are to perform a fundraising concert in The Village Theatre, Carrabane this weekend.