Yeats & the Problem of Crazy Jane
Public Talk
with
Professor Margaret Mills Harper
6pm Thursday 28 April
Fergus Bourke: Hawthorn Tree, Connemara
This talk considers Yeats’s late 1930s flowering in poetry that is randy, raucous, rampaging, but possessing also a rare subtlety and rhythmic feeling. The talk opens up discussion of poetics, censorship, balladry, sexuality, the fascinating western figures of Cracked Mary and Crazy Jane, what you can get up to beneath trees, and even a type of herbal substance named ‘Warlock’. Professor Harper’s scholarship is both engaging and profound, and this is a talk not to be missed.
Margaret Mills Harper is Glucksman Professor of Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick. She is the author of The Aristocracy of Art: Joyce and Wolfe (1990), and Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats ( 2006). She has co-edited two of the four volumes of Yeats’s “Vision” Papers (1992 and 2001) and both the 1925 and 1937 versions of Yeats’s A Vision (2008, 2015).
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that’s dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron’s hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
Jack had my virginity,
And bids me to the oak, for he
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Wanders out into the night
And there is shelter under it,
But should that other come, I spit:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
Professor Margaret Mills Harper appears in conversation with the curator of Yeats & the West, and Lecturer in English at NUI Galway, Dr Adrian Paterson.
Dr Adrian Paterson – NUI Galway and curator of the exhibition, speaking at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16
Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks
Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.
Free entry
Tours Thursday at 1pm
Tours of the exhibition from the curators take place every Thursday at 1pm. Find out what makes art and poetry so close, and observe the connection of books, and music, drama, and discover never before seen rare books and fine art from the collections of NUI Galway and The Model. Come and get an inside view of the crafts and cultures that made a western revolution.
Dr Adrian Paterson, NUI Galway, and curator of the exhibition, Donal Tinney, Chairperson of The Model, John Cox, NUIG, and Barry Houlihan, NUIG, at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16
Talks Thursdays at 6pm
This series of talks on Yeats’s connection to the west and beyond takes us inside the makings of a western cultural revolution. Talks from experts in the field range from exploring the pioneering art and craftwork of the Yeats family to W.B.Yeats’s own life and loves, considering his some of his most controversial and sexy poems; they reveal the extraordinary plays of his brother, the artist Jack B. Yeats, and alongside the Model Gallery’s newly unveiled Broadside collection, showcase his design and print work; and they weigh the wider forces that turned a cultural revolution into a real one.
Speakers include the curators of the exhibition Dr Adrian Paterson and Barry Houlihan (NUI Galway), Professor Adrian Frazier (NUI Galway), Professor Margaret Mills Harper (University of Limerick and outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School), Dr Hilary Pyle (former Yeats Curator at National Gallery of Ireland), Dr Ian Walsh (NUI Galway), Dr Mary Harris (NUI Galway).
All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.
7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’
Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway
14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’
Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway
21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’
Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland
28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’
Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School
5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.
Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway
12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’
Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway
For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie
Tues-Sat: 10am – 5.30pm
Thurs: 10am – 8pm
Sun: 12 – 5pm
Mon: Closed
Thoor Ballylee 