William Butler Yeats @150
William Butler Yeats: Irish prose writer, dramatist and poet; Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 1865-1939; compiled the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. My favourite Irish author would have been 150 years today. Ireland, myself included, celebrates a man so talented, his words still touches people today. Two years ago, and on my birthday, I visited Yeats’s grave in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland. Because he was one of my favourites since my teenage years, it was a bucket-list moment that was finally realized! I wished I was in Sligo this weekend, but I’m sure I will go back before too long, especially since his house, Thoor Ballylee, has finally been opened to the public, something many fans had been asking for a very long time.
Kick-Ass Ireland
Some days I sit still and think about how my life became a dream full-circle. There’s William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Brendan Behan. Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Land of Heart’s Desire and Yeats’s grave. Dubliners, Ulysses and Bloomsday. The mountains, lakes, Dublin, Sligo and the Shannon. Brú na Boinne, Corcaigh, Beara, Daingean Uí Chúis, Zú Bhaile Átha Cliath, craic agus ceol. Brian Ború, Michael Collins, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Daniel O’Connell. Seven hundred years of cruelty, yet still able to endure hard times. Writers, dancers, taps, tin whistles and uilleann pipes. Books, almighty libraries and small bookshops selling secrets. Friendships gained, lost and renewed. New alliances forged in foothills and strengthened on mountain tops. “You, the Irish” becoming “Us…