July 24 - August 5 - 2016

SLIGO IRELANDwww.yeatssociety.com

24 July - 5 August // 2016

This year, Ireland commemorates the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Writers, journalists, politicians and citizens will return to the G.P.O. to remember the moment when Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of Irish independence. It will be almost impossible to pick up a newspaper without reading Yeats’s line:

“All changed, changed utterly, / a terrible beauty is born.”

In fact, these lines have become such an important part of commemorating the Rising that it is hard to separate the event from the poem. They show how deeply embedded Yeats’s words are within Irish culture.

As the incoming director of the Yeats International Summer School, it is a particular pleasure to host this event in Sligo in 2016 when Yeats’s words will be on everyone’s lips. At the 2016 school, we will pay particular attention to Yeats’s Rising and to Ireland’s revolution through world-class lectures and seminars together with poetry readings and music celebrating the centenary.

Yeats’s lines are woven into the discussions, debates and speeches of contemporary life because Yeats seems to address our times directly, his words resonating “now and in time to be.” Please join us in Sligo for this extraordinary opportunity to reflect on the turbulent century since the Rising through the writings of our national poet.

Geraldine Higgins | Director | YISS

There is another world, but it is in this one.

Patron

Catriona Yeats

Greetings from SLIGO. Following on the amazing national and international success of Yeats 150 in 2015, the Yeats Society encourages you to join us at this year’s 57th Yeats International Summer School. 2016 will be a special year for Ireland, commemorated at home and abroad as the centenary of the 1916 Rising, which led to the formation of The Irish Free State.

The Director, Geraldine Higgins, (Emory University) has assembled a team of Yeatsian scholars, historians, literary critics and a dramatist who will deliver the programme. Enhancing the academic content are the excursions into The Yeats Country and a feast of cultural & social events to choose from. In this age of virtual presence the YISS takes you to another place. Yeats was fascinated by the landscape, place names and folklore of Sligo that formed the early experience of his youth while staying with his Pollexfen grandparents at Merville. Thinking of his spiritual home in ‘Under Saturn’ (1921) Yeats wrote:

‘Like a child’s vow sworn in vain / Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home’.

Members of the Yeats Society and our friends throughout the Sligo Community have, since 1960, extended a special céad míle fáilte to the students of the Summer School. Make your booking today at www.yeatssociety.com and you too can experience the unique sense of community which is the hallmark of the Yeats Summer School

Note our Ambassador Programme, page (page 11)

and details of our Scholarship Scheme (page 10)

We look forward to meeting you.

Martin Enright | President | The Yeats Society | Sligo

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Summer School OpeningSunday 24 July 2.30 pm

The official opening of the Summer School takes place in the Hawk’s Well Theatre and is followed by a scenic tour of Yeats country which concludes with Evensong

at Drumcliff Church, where Yeats is buried,Under Bare Benbulben’s Head.

This will be followed by a buffet reception.

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago, a church stands near,By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.

Horseman, pass by!

Full price - 2 weeks: €650Full price - 1 week: €400

Early Bird - Returning Students rate - 2 weeks: €600Early Bird - Returning Students rate - 1 week: €370

The cost of the Poetry Workshop is €100

All events open to public except afternoon seminars For further information contact:

Yeats Society - Douglas Hyde Bridge - Sligo - Ireland info@yeatssociety.com // ph: +353 7191 42693

Daily Programme

Fees

9:30am Lecture 1Hawk’s Well Theatre

11:15am Lecture 2Hawk’s Well Theatre

1:15pmLunchtime Events

Methodist Church, Wine St

2:30 – 5:30pmDrama Workshop

Methodist Church, Wine St

4:30 – 6:30pm Seminars Yeats Memorial Building

8:00pm Evening Events Methodist Church, Wine St

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Geraldine Higgins (Emory University), Ronan McDonald are the Director and Associate Director of this years Summer School. Each weekday morning, lectures take place at 9.30am & 11.15am in the Hawk’s Well Theatre.

Renowned Irish poet Vona Groarke is a Senior Lecturer teaching poetry in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, and is the current editor of Poetry Ireland Review. Her Selected Poems chosen from her six award-winning poetry collections with Gallery Press was published this year (2016). The optional poetry workshop requires an additional fee of €100.

Poetry Workshops Vona Groarke Saturday 30 & Sunday 31 July

The very feel of the familiar Sligo earthputs me in good spirits.

Monday 25 JulyGeraldine Higgins - “Timing Yeats’s Rising”Ronan McDonald - “Idle Trade: Work & Exchange Value in Yeats”

Tuesday 26 JulyRoy Foster - “Jack Yeats: Painting the Irish Revolution”Sean Pryor - “Yeats & Futurity”

Wednesday 27 JulyAngela Bourke - “When Yeats Met Cú Chulainn”Nathan Suhr-Sytsma - “Yeats in the Era of Decolonization”

Thursday 28 JulyRand Brandes - “The Field Day Yeats”Aoife Monks - “Yeats, Costume & the new Irish Body in performance”

Friday 29 JulyJahan Ramazani - “Poetry, War & the Local in a Global Age”Q & A Panel

Monday 1 AugustBernard O’Donoghue - “Yeats’s Poetic License”Roisin Higgins - “Yeats and Commemoration”

Tuesday 2 AugustBen Levitas - “Yeats, the Dancer and the Revolution”Catriona Clutterbuck - “‘The Wisdom of Being Comforted’: Yeats & Solace

Wednesday 3 AugustLauren Arrington - “’Two Girls in Silk Kimonos’: Yeats & the Gore-Booth sisters”Young Suck Rhee - “Yeats, the pre-Raphaelites & Eastern Painting”

Thursday 4 AugustJohn McCourt - ”The eternal circling of Yeats & Joyce’Sinead McCoole - “Yeats, MacBride, Gonne and the formation of national memory”

Friday 5 AugustFintan O’Toole - “Arresting Time: Yeats as Dramatist”Q & A Panel

Lectures // Week 1

Lectures // Week 2

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Cathleen Ní Houlihan 8.30pm

Friday 5 August // Hawk’s Well Theatre

In this centenary year, the drama workshop will focus on Yeats’ best-known play, Cathleen Ní Houlihan(co-written by Lady Gregory). The play, first performed in 1902, starred Maud Gonne as the old woman who is transformed by the blood sacrifice of the young bridegroom who lays down his life for Ireland. In later life, Yeats worried about its powerful message, “Did that play of mine send out/Certain men the English shot?” It was on the playbill in Easter week 1916 but not performed.

Director Declan Drohan will lead the two-week series of drama workshops examining the text’s progression from visionary/cautionary tale through its incarnation as a psychic x ray of the nation’s evolution into its ‘afterlife’ in a different time and understanding of ‘terrorism ‘or ‘political extremism‘.

Participants will experiment with the styles/systems best suited to capturing the spirit of the piece including dance, physicality and ritual. The workshop culminates in the production of Cathleen Ní Houlihan at the Hawk’s Well Theatre on Friday 5th August.

Director’s NoteThe rehearsal space is a laboratory comprised of fixed and free elements. Stable and unstable.A workshop. A place of discovery.I will meet you there....

Declan Drohan | Director | Workshop Leader

Note: Workshop requires additional booking at time of registration.

Seminars take place each afternoon and cover a range of specific topics.

Week 1Ronan McDonald - “Yeats’ Ars Poetica”Sean Pryor - “Yeats & Anglo-American Modernism”Nathan Suhr-Sytsma - “The Tower”Rand Brandes - “Yeats & Heaney”Aoife Monks - “Yeats & Modernist theatre practice”

Week 2Bernard O’Donoghue - “The Wild Swans at Coole& Michael Robartes and the Dancer”Ben Levitas - “Yeats’ Late Theatre”Catriona Clutterbuck - “Yeats and Gender”Lauren Arrington - “Yeats & the Irish Revolution”John McCourt - “The Elegiac Yeats”

Tours during the Summer School include:

Opening day Tour - Yeats Country

Thoor Ballylee & Coole Park - GalwaySaturday 30 August

Lissadell House - Co. Sligo

All lunchtime and evening readings will be in the Methodist Church, Wine Street unless otherwise specified. Check our website for more information

27 JulyJennifer Horne (lunchtime reading)

29 JulyVona Groarke (evening reading)

3 AugustBernard O’Donoghue (launch & evening reading)

Seminars

Readings

Tours

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Exhibition1916 at The Hyde Bridge Galleryin association with The Hamilton Gallery

The Yeats Society is delighted to be able to offer a number of scholarships each year, to enable deserving students and others to attend the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, which would otherwise be beyond their reach.

Deadline for scholarship applications is May 1stFor more information see www.yeatssociety.com

Hope and Memory have one daughterand her name is Art...

Become an Ambassadorfor the 2016

Yeats InternationalSummer School

You are invited to bring groups of five or more to the 2016 Summer School. One free place will be

awarded per group of five (not including accommodation).

The exhibition “A Terrible Beauty is Born” features the work of over 60 visual artists nationwide. It is a dynamic, provocative and comprehensive response, 100 years on, by the shapers of our contemporary visual arts culture to the events of 1916, with W.B. Yeats’ iconic ‘Easter 1916’ poem used as a springboard.

Organised and curated by Hamilton Gallery “A Terrible Beauty is Born” runs from June 2nd to August 27th at both the Hamilton Gallery and The Hyde Bridge Gallery at the Yeats memorial building.

Yeats Society - Douglas Hyde Bridge - Sligo - Ireland

info@yeatssociety.com // ph: +353 7191 42693

For more details, please contact:

Yeats Scholars

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Supported by:

Business Sponsors:

Pierce Loughran Memorial FundYeats Experience, SligoThe SoroptomistsSligo Tidy TownsDavis’s Restaurant, DrumcliffeDrumcliffe Tea HouseSligo Methodist ChurchDrumcliffe ChurchThe ModelHawk’s Well TheatreThe Glasshouse HotelSligo Park HotelBest Western, Sligo Southern HotelWehrly Brothers JewellersSligo Leader Partnership Co.Bewleys Ltd.Burkes PharmacyEasonsLiber BookshopThe Cat and the MoonThe Hamilton GalleryThe Gallery Press

Angel and Gift WorldCafe FleurLilly & Lolly’s CafeBistro BianconiA Casa MiaSherlock HamiltonAccountants

Sponsors:

Aleck CrichtonJoseph M. HassettJoan & Joe McBreenHelen VendlerRaymond OwensDamien TanseyJohn MullaneyJonathen AllisonFamily of the latePatricia Carroll HaydenMaureen MurphyMargeret Mills HarperThe McTighe FamilyEileen & Ray MonahanRonald SchuchardPatrick F. Dooney

Geraldine Higgins & Ronan McDonald will direct the 2017 school.

July 24 - August 5 - 2016

Lone Tree // An Isle in the Water // Coney Island Causeway

Images courtesy of www.ciaranmchugh.com