Yeats group plans to host permanent exhibition

The organisers of Sligo's annual International Yeats Summer School unveiled ambitious plans yesterday for a permanent exhibition dedicated to the poet, pledging to end accusations of elitism which they feel have unfairly overshadowed the event.

As the summer school continues its two-week run in Sligo, the locally-based Yeats Society revealed that a permanent Yeats exhibition will be sited in a purpose-built multimillion-euro venue at the heart of the city's planned cultural quarter.

Stella Mew, chief executive of the society, said it believed that when the three-year exhibition on the life and works of the poet ends in the National Library, the "natural progression will be for it to come home to Sligo".

The Yeats Society has repeatedly highlighted the authorities' failure to exploit fully Sligo's links with the poet in the same way as Trieste celebrates its Joycean connections or Stratford-on-Avon its debt to Shakespeare, pointing out that both the poet and his famous brother Jack had said that Sligo made them.

"Sligo boasts the name 'Yeats country' and indeed Sligo County Council has 'land of heart's desire' on its coat of arms but it has done very little to fund the Yeats Society over the years," said Mew.

Michael Keohane, former society president, commented that the best tourist guide for anyone visiting the northwest would be a book of Yeats's poetry, given the number of local beauty spots the poet had immortalised in his work.

But Keohane said that plaques had still not been erected on the eight or so buildings in Sligo with strong connection to Yeats such as the home of his maternal grandparents, the Pollexfens, where the poet had spent so much of his childhood.

President of the Yeats Society, Aleck Crichton, said the British government had given Yeats a pension in 1896. "He has not yet been given a pension by his own people," he remarked.

Crichton revealed that the society has elaborate plans for a comprehensive, accessible exhibition to be housed in a major extension to the Yeats Memorial Building in the centre of the city.

"We have had 50 years of charges of elitism which is totally wrong but quite understandable," said Crichton.

He said the summer school, now in its 48th year, would continue to attract scholars from around the globe while the planned exhibition would draw a wider audience of local as well as international visitors.

The Yeats Society believes the Sligo-based exhibition will boast a wealth of unique family and local memorabilia, making it the most comprehensive ever dedicated to the poet.

The poet's Nobel medal is in the Sligo museum. Mr Keohane's family have a number of letters written to them by the poet's wife, George. "My father tended the grave for 20 years and we have letters from George but there are several Sligo families with other interesting memorabilia," said Keohane.

This year the summer school, which continues until Friday, has attracted 170 students from 22 nationalities.