Yeats Day - The Sisters

This year Yeats Day included the launch of a 10-day rescheduled and re-branded Craftfest Northwest festival honouring WB's sisters Susan and Elizabeth - affectionately named Lily and Lolly by her siblings.

Susan (Lily) was a keen embroiderist.  Elizabeth (Lolly) trained under the renowned artist and textile designer William Morris in London. She was an artist and the main inspiration for the Cuala Press which she ran with her sister. They printed the work of WB Yeats and many other well-known writers including Ezra Pound, Douglas Hyde, Rabindranath Tagore and Elizabeth Bowen.

The LilyLolly Craftfest will build on the success in recent years of the Northwest Craftfest. The rebranded and rescheduled festival - promoted by Made in Sligo craft workers group - will now be launched on Yeats day every year.

I went along to see the exhibition of quilts suitable titled The Fascination of What's Difficult by the Yeats County Quilters. Wonderful work. The top, smaller quilt, is a Sligo Heritage quilt of theirs.

Yeats Day 2013 Sligo

This second Yeats Day in Sligo seems to have been a great success; a lot of people around the town, attending the various events and there were lots of events.

I got to the Hilary Pyle talk on the Jack B Yeats exhibition, Enter the Clowns in the Model, the official launch of the Tread Softly Yeats Festival, the Happy Birthday Mr Yeats celebration in O'Connell St, the exhibition of Yeats’ work from The National Library, Sligo County Library and IT Sligo in the old Pollexfen building in Wine Street, the art installation at the Yeats statue at the old Ulster Bank, the quilt exhibition by Yeats County Quilters and I even read two poems at the Poetry Parlour in the Yeats Memorial Building.

Pictures:
Top: The O'Connell St celebrations in the afternoon.
Above: The launch of the Tread Softly Festival by the Mayor of Sligo beside the new portrait of Jack B Yeats in the Model Art Gallety.
Below: The art installation at the Yeats statue by art students Hugh McGettigan and Ciara Finan. Four of his poem were printed on the stands. After reading each poem you were invited to go under the cloth and look at a photographic interpretation of the poem.