Sunday Feature: Wb Yeats and the Artifice of Eternity

Theo Dorgan explores the way the poet WB Yeats is still an important presence in the cultural and public life of Ireland and the wider world, 150 years after he was born. While Yeats's early poems, drawing on fairy tales of ancient Ireland, are often dismissed as whimsy, Ireland Professor of Poetry Paula Meehan argues that throughout his life magic was crucial to Yeats. At the Abbey, created by Yeats and Augusta, Lady Gregory as a national theatre, its director Fiach Mac Conghail reveals how the poet was a practical man of the theatre and a modernist, absorbing dramatic styles from all over the world. Declan Kiberd, a leading Yeats scholar, reveals the complexities of Yeats's character, including his political opinions, his relationships with women, his ambitions and his 'Irishness'. Historian Diarmaid Ferriter explains that the poet was very effective as a senator and Catriona Crowe of the National Archives of Ireland explains what records reveal of Yeats's place in the national memory. And Irish president Michael D Higgins considers what Yeats would think of the Ireland today and the place of poetry in contemporary politics. With poetry readings by Jim Norton