03/02/2009 -

Yeats’ Trail Launched in City Hall

Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney joined Mayor Councillor Veronica Cawley and Cathaoirleach Councillor Jude Devins in City Hall, Sligo, for the formal launch of the ‘Yeats Passport Trail’. The launch was the focal point of a day’s events organised by the Yeats Society and Failte Ireland North West on the 70th Anniversary of the death of WB Yeats.

 
- Author Seamus Heaney addresses City Hall a recent launch of Yeats' Trail

Seamus Heaney admitted to some reservations about launching the trail, as it  marks the ‘places of silence and solitude’ for Yeats. Stella Mew, Chief Executive of the Yeats Society, feels that ‘Yeats should be as important to Sligo as Shakespeare is to Stratford-on-Avon, but we don’t treat him with the same respect.’

Other events hosted on the anniversary were a memorial service in St John’s Cathedral and a the launch in Cromleach Lodge Hotel of a DVD ‘Cast a Cold Eye’ and Sheelagh Kirby’s book ‘The Yeats country.’