The name of Yeats is ubiquitous in Co Sligo, used to sell everything from accommodation to cheese, but it has also been a powerful impetus to the development of cultural activities in the region, including 41 years of the Yeats Summer School.
This received a boost in 1973 when the AIB donated its handsome building on the Douglas Hyde Bridge in the centre of Sligo to the Yeats Society.
It became the society's headquarters, hosting seminars during the summer school and occasional cultural events in the winter, while upstairs it housed the Sligo Art Gallery. It was extensively refurbished in 1998, with the creation of a conference hall on the ground floor.
Now it is planned to carry out a major extension of the building, to house a Yeats resource and cultural centre containing a multimedia exhibition, auditorium, audio-visual interactive space and study facilities for students.
The £1 million plan was launched by former EU Commissioner Mr Ray MacSharry, and funding is being sought from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
Ms Marian Quinn, the society's development officer, says it is hoped there will be money from the Ireland Fund, the International Fund for Ireland and other bodies.
One of the functions of the new centre will be to catalogue some of the objects and artefacts associated with the poet.
These include the original draft of the poem Day and Night; the plaster death mask of John B. Yeats, the poet's father; the original manuscript of the poem Crazy Jane meets the Bishop on Coole Park stationery and a souvenir-printed handkerchief with pictures of the Irish Players and a poem signed by Yeats, sold to help fund a building for the Hugh Lane collection.
These are now on loan to the Dublin Writers' Museum in Parnell Square, Dublin, but the society wants to establish the correct environment in which they, and other items, can be displayed, Ms Quinn says.
Last year, an arts forum brought 50 adults and children together in workshops on the visual and written arts, and she hopes this kind of activity will expand with the new centre.