Search Results for 'WB'

The Poet’s Picnic is an annual celebration of WB Yeats’ birthday on June 13. Lovers of Yeats’ poetry have gathered and feasted on the grounds of the Norman tower house that was his summer home, and the inspiration for some of his most beautiful work.

The first time Lady Gregory met John Quinn was on Sunday August 31 1902 at a Feis Ceol she had partly organised in the memory of Ó Raifteirí the poet. The occasion also marked Lady Gregory’s first steps into the Celtic revival movement which would absorb her energies throughout her long life, and define her reputation for ever.

Famously WB Yeats was giving a lecture in Aberdeen on Saturday evening January 26 1907, the opening night of the Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Just before his lecture started he received a telegraph from Lady Gregory to say the first act was well received.

The final curtain came down on the relationship between Annie Horniman and the Abbey Theatre in the days following the death of Edward VII on May 6 1910. It was customary that on the death of a British monarch all theatres would close as a mark of respect. Dublin theatres were expected to uphold that tradition, and indeed they did, the only exception on this occasion was the Abbey Theatre.

Not only is it interesting to see the initials of the people Lady Gregory admired on her ‘Hall of Fame’, the famous autograph tree at Coole Park, Co Galway, it is perhaps more interesting to see the names she leaves out.

The most revolutionary play ever produced on an Irish stage was Cathleen Ní Houlihan written by WB Yeats and Lady Gregory. It was performed to a packed audience on a makeshift stage at St Teresa’s Hall in Clarendon Street, Dublin on April 2 1902. It was astonishing in its veracity.

The former British prime minister, Harold Wilson, once mused that "a week is a long time in politics". Never in modern times has that phrase been so true.

HUMANITY DICK, the acclaimed one-man show about the colourful life and times of Galway MP, humanitarian, and serial duellist Richard Martin, will be performed in what was once his home.

In what must be the ultimate irony in the compelling story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and their brief, but significant visit to Connemara in September 1962, it was Hughes who returned to find solace and peace there. Sylvia had planned to return that autumn, instead she found, what she thought was a refuge in the former home of WB Yeats in London, and despite the onset of severe depression, remained there to write her best poems. It would probably have saved her life if she had taken up the rented cottage she had paid a deposit for, between Cleggan and Moyard. Instead in London she battled against a bitter cold winter, ‘flu, frozen pipes, and minding her two small children while writing furiously most of the night.

ENGLISHWOMAN, IRISH republican, suffragette, activist, actor, writer, and muse to WB Yeats, Maud Gonne was one of the most prominent figures in late 19th and early 20th century Ireland.