In 2015 Ireland celebrated the 150th anniversary of

the birth of the Nobel Prize-winning poet,

William Butler Yeats.

W.B. Yeats is Ireland’s greatest poet and considered by many the

finest poet of the twentieth century.

He brought a revolutionary new voice into Irish literature – while

initially rooting his work in Ireland’s ancient myths and folklore he

was also a distinctly modern poet. Seamus Heaney noted that

Yeats was both the founder and inheritor of traditions: with a

lifelong interest in the occult and in Irish mythology, an openness

to European art and eastern philosophy, and with a sceptical,

questioning intellect.

Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats is often associated with Sligo where

he spent long periods in his youth. Yeats thought of the county as

his spiritual home, and today Sligo is often referred to as “Yeats’

County”.

To help mark Yeats 2015 Westmeath County Library exhibited

some of his poems throughout the seven libraries. These are now

gathered together to showcase a small selection of Yeats’ poetry.