Honorary President of Yeats Society Sligo
It is our great pleasure to announce that Ambassador Dan Mulhall has been named as the new Honorary President of Yeats Society Sligo.
Click here to read Daniel Mulhall’s article
‘Around the World with WB Yeats’
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“It is a huge personal honour to be named as Honorary President of the Yeats Society.
I have had a lifelong interest in Yeats’s work, right back to my schooldays in Waterford and the years I spent studying history and literature at University College Cork. I have maintained this enthusiasm for Yeats throughout my life as a representative of Ireland around the world.
In India during the 1980s and the other countries where I have served, I came across many people with a keen interest in Yeats. This brought home to me the extent to which Yeats’s work is a national treasure that helps enhance Ireland’s reputation around the world. I know that my colleagues at our Embassies draw heavily on Yeats in their work promoting Ireland through the medium of our literature.
Over the years, I have written and spoken frequently about Yeats around the world and have also had the pleasure of speaking on three occasions at the Yeats Summer School, most recently in August of this year. I want to extend my warmest thanks to the Yeats Society for the enormous honour they have bestowed on me.”
Daniel Mulhall
Ambassador of Ireland to the United States
Daniel Mulhall was born and brought up in Waterford. He pursued his graduate and post-graduate studies at University College Cork where he specialised in modern Irish history and literature. He took up duty as Ireland’s 18th Ambassador to the United States in August 2017.
He has spent his professional life with the Department of Foreign Affairs which he joined in 1978 and has had a range of diplomatic assignments, latterly as Ambassador to Malaysia (2001-2005), Germany (2009-2013) and the United Kingdom (2013-2017). During his diplomatic career, he has also held a number of positions in Dublin, including as a member of the Secretariat of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (1994-95) and as Director-General for European Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs (2005-2009).
Ambassador Mulhall maintains a keen interest in Irish history and literature. During his various diplomatic assignments, he has lectured and written frequently about Irish literature and history, including the life and work of W.B. Yeats. In 2015, for the 150th anniversary of Yeats’s birth he spoke about Yeats all over Britain, including at the Oxford Literary Festival, the Newbury Festival and the Edinburgh Book Festival. He is the author of A New Day Dawning: a Portrait of Ireland in 1900 (Cork, 1999) and co-editor of The Shaping of Modern Ireland: A Centenary Assessment (Dublin, 2016).
A keen advocate of public diplomacy, Ambassador Mulhall makes regular use of social media in order to promote all things Irish and to engage with Irish people and those of Irish descent around the world. He provides frequent updates on his Twitter account @DanMulhall, including daily Irish poetry tweets, and posts regular blogs on the Embassy’s website.
Daniel Mulhall
Ambassador of Ireland to the United States
Poet in residence
Yeats Society Sligo appointed a poet in residence for the first time in 2018 on Poetry Day Ireland. This ensures that the Society acknowledges the importance of contemporary poetry in the cultural world and supports living poets in their work.
Vona Groarke has published fourteen books, most recently Woman of Winter (Gallery Books, 2023), and Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara (New York University Press, 2022). She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.
Vona Groarke
Poet in Residence
Every year, we are fortunate to have the support of our amazing sponsors and patrons without whom it would not be possible to facilitate our International Summer School.
We welcome interns from third-level and transition year students and aim to give a real-life working experience to the students who come here.
Yeats Society Sligo is a Company Limited by Guarantee and a registered charity. It is managed by a director and has an independent board, comprised of eight people who live and work locally and who give of their time on a voluntary basis.
History of Yeats Society Sligo
In 1957 as part of a national tourism promotion drive (An Tostal), a small group of enthusiasts met in Sligo and decided to hold a Yeats Country Festival. The festival held on 11-15 May 1958 was a great success. The highlight was ‘Salute to Yeats’, directed by Jim McGarry, with Mrs. M. Watson, Jo Lappin and the Mullaney brothers reciting Yeats’s poetry.
Elated by that success, the group – Frank Wynne (Chairman), Nora Niland, Eileen Lambert (Hon Secretary), Sheelah Kirby, Tom McEvilly, Fr. Tom Moran and Jim McGarry (all deceased) met again on 20th May and established the Yeats Society, Sligo. Its purpose was to organise a Yeats Summer School, to which Tom Mullaney was appointed Hon. Secretary on 5th July 1959.
Dr. T.R.Henn of St. Catharine’s College Cambridge, a native of Sligo, was advisor of Sligo’s first Yeats International Summer School, held in late August 1960. He remained a guiding light for many years, and was Director from 1962 – 1968.
The School, of course, has since grown in strength and prestige and its story is told in most interesting detail in Jim McGarry’s ‘The Dream I Knew’ (1990). The warm reception given locally to visitors and the generous sponsorship by local business people also played an important part.
The diligent work of Yeats Society Sligo presidents, many council and other members over the years must also be acknowledged.
Successive presidents were:
F.Wynne, J.Keohane, T.Mullaney,Canon T.P.S.Wood, Mrs E.Lambert, J.Keohane (2nd time), A.Cantwell, M.McTighe, Edward J. Wylie-Warren, Michael Keohane, Aleck Crichton, Joe Cox, Damien Brennan, and Martin Enright.
History of the Yeats Building
The home of Sligo Yeats Society is a building of outstanding historical and architectural interest in Sligo town. Designed in the Arts & Crafts style, and built in 1899, as a branch of the Belfast Banking Company, its non-classical architectural style is unusual for a bank.
Sligo at the end of the 19th century was a busy seaport and the only seaport between Derry and Galway. Known as “Little Belfast”, the town was connected to the prosperous Ulster linen trade and exported cattle, corn, butter and provisions. Imports included iron, timber, salt and West India produce. William Butler Yeats’ mother was Susan Pollexfen and her family owned and ran the Sligo Steam Navigation Company. It bought the first steam ships in Ireland and handled most of the trading activity in Sligo port. Business links with the Sligo Steam Navigation Company persuaded the Belfast Banking Company to establish a bank in the heart of Sligo, right beside Victoria Bridge. The name was changed to Hyde Bridge after Irish independence was declared.
Belfast Banking Company acquired the site from the newly formed Sligo Corporation in 1897 for the knockdown price of 20 pounds and it agreed to provide a sewer as part of the project, helping with the sanitation issue in the town.
The Bank chose Belfast architect Vincent Craig (1869-1925), one of the seven sons of James Craig, the famous whiskey distillers, to design the building. He was educated at Bath College and trained as an architect in Belfast with William Lynn. Craig was a follower of George Lister Sutcliffe, a noted Arts & Crafts architect and a pioneer of the Garden City suburbs that were to influence urban architecture throughout the world. The building was completed in 1899 by the Sligo builder Dennis McGlynn.
Arts & Crafts buildings emphasise traditional construction, asymmetry, craftsmanship and use of a wide variety of materials. These ideas can be seen throughout this building. The building is one of only three in Sligo town in this style, the others being the Masonic Lodge on the Mall, and Weston house on Union St.
The building is in English medieval revival style with elements of Oriental decorative features. It is designed on an asymmetrical plan, and is two-and-a-half storeys, constructed of red Belfast brick with stone details. After Ireland became independent, Belfast Banking Company withdrew from the new Irish Free State and it sold the business to the Royal Irish Bank whose name is still engraved on the building. It later became Allied Irish Banks (AIB) which generously agreed to provide the building on a long lease to the Yeats Society in 1973.
Arts & Crafts was an influential cultural movement of the late 19th century, inspired by the writings of the English polymath John Ruskin and designer William Morris. William Morris’s Red House built at Bexleyheath in London in 1860 is seen as the first example and archetype of the style.
The Yeats family was directly involved in and influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement. John Yeats had, with his son William, met Morris in Dublin when he spoke at the Contemporary Club. Later, William became a regular visitor at Morris’s Kelmscott house. Here, Susan Yeats studied the fine medieval embroidery technique known as “opus anglicanum” with William Morris’s daughter, May Morris from 1888 to 1894. Later, she taught this technique, but now inspired by Irish themes, at Dun Emer Industries in Dublin.
Both Yeats sisters, Susan and Elizabeth, were pioneers in the early Irish Arts & Crafts movement, engaged in textiles, bookbinding and printing. Their company was Cuala Press and based in Dublin.
This research was compiled and written by archaeologist Dylan Foley.
