Thoor Ballylee Poetry Competition
Write back to Yeats!
Thoor Ballylee extends an open invitation to new (or old) poets for a poem in response to Yeats’s lines a hundred years ago (1938) in his poem ‘Under Ben Bulben’ (edited a little, from Stanza V):
Irish poets, learn your tradeSing the peasantry and thenHard-riding country gentlemen…Sing the lords and ladies gayThat were beaten into the clayThrough seven heroic centuries;Cast your mind on other daysThat we in coming days may beStill the indomitable Irishry
W.B. Yeats, from ‘Under Ben Bulben’ (1938)
So. Are we still the indomitable Irishry??
One poem only per poet — no pseudonyms.
Add name and address/email/phone to submitted poem.
Poems should be under three minutes to say and must reach Galway Bay FM (arts@galwaybayfm.ie) by Friday 29th September.
Up to three poets may be chosen.
The chosen poet or poets must be available to come and say or read the poem 7.30 on Saturday October 7th in Thoor Ballylee!
There will be a modest award for the poem which, in the opinion of the audience, best responds to Yeats’s poem.
Poetry Night Saturday 7th October 2017 also features:
Sarah Clancy, author of The Truth and Other Stories. This is Sarah’s third collection of poetry. In it she excavates the personal and psychological wreckage caused by an unrelenting recession in her native Ireland and further afield – with sacrificing the warmth, wit, or linguistic extremity for which she is known.
Lisa McInerney’s first novel The Glorious Heresies won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, The Blood Miracles, was published in April 2017 and she is just finishing her third. She lives in Gort.
Thoor Ballylee 