Poet, playwright, cultural leader, Nobel Prize winner—William Butler Yeats left behind a legacy that extended beyond his beloved home in Ireland and influenced poets and writers across the globe. This year Ireland is commemorating the poet with Yeats2015, a “local, national and international series of exhibitions, performances, educational events, festivals, concerts, readings, talks, and screenings.”
This national and international celebration was launched on September 25, 2014, in London, and this year the event developed into a yearlong affair to mark the 150-year-anniversary of Yeats’s birth on June 13, 1865. This weekend brings Yeats Day 2015, with festivities focused in Yeats’s haunts of Sligo, Galway, and Dublin in celebration of his birth.
For more information on this yearlong celebration of Yeats, visit the Yeats2015 website. Read more about the poet who inspired the celebration and browse twenty-eight of his popular poems below.