The 2025 Conference of the International Yeats Society
W.B. YEATS: DUBLINER
30 October to 1 November | Trinity College Dublin
Reviewing Lady Wilde’s Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland in 1890, W. B. Yeats bemoaned that ‘around and northward of Dublin no small amount of gloom has blown from overseas’. Just outside the city in Howth, however, he noted that ‘the old life goes on but little changed’; the hospital patients of Sir William Wilde, drawn to Dublin from across Ireland, had also offered a rich source of folklore now being ‘quarried’ in his widow’s latest book. This review captures something of the complexity of the city’s culture, as well as its close yet fraught relationship with the rest of the country. Such complexity and contestation has been an under-regarded aspect of scholarly writing on Yeats’s work.
At different points in his life, the poet resided in many parts of Dublin and its environs. Significant parts of his education took place in the city. He was also formed by and an inveterate shaper of many of its cultural organisations and institutions. Important too was Dublin’s then vibrant and distinctive salon culture. A site of many close friendships and collaborations, the city was for periods the location of his father’s and brother’s studios, and his sisters’ Arts and Crafts enterprises. Through Dun Emer and Cuala, Yeats also had direct involvement in the local publishing of his and others’ writings. Furthermore, the city is a setting for many of his works – from the protagonist sat dreaming in a house in ‘the old parts of Dublin’ in the 1896 short story ‘Rosa Alchemica’ to the recollections of encounters on its streets that open ‘Easter 1916’. Whatever his stated antipathy to the city and its environs, including as a site of British-influenced urban modernity, the poet was very much a Dubliner.
Taking place in the heart of the city at Trinity College – an institution the poet condemned in 1892 for having ‘shut itself off from every kind of ardour, from every kind of fiery and exultant life’ – this conference offers an opportunity to reflect on Yeats’s working life in Dublin, and the place of the city and its cultures in his work.
P.J. Mathews is Professor of Irish Literature, Drama and Culture at University College Dublin, where he is also the Director of the Creative Futures Academy. Together with Declan Kiberd, he co-edited Handbook of the Irish Revival, published by the Abbey Theatre Press and nominated for an Irish Book of the Year award in 2015. He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge (2009) and the author of Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, The Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement, which published by Field Day in 2003. He was Academic Director of the W. B. Yeats Winter School in Sligo from 2017 until 2020.
Emilie Morin is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of York. She is the author of Samuel Beckett and the Problem of Irishness (2009), Beckett's Political Imagination (2017), and Suzanne Dumesnil, Suzanne Beckett (2025). Her other publications include the anthology Early Radio: An Anthology of European Texts and Translations (2023). Her publications on Yeats include a special issue of International Yeats Studies on ‘Yeats and Mass Communications’, co-edited with David Dwan, and a forthcoming article on Yeats, Edward Gordon Craig and scenography in Modern Drama.
Accommodation in Dublin is, unfortunately, rather expensive. Moreover, as the conference is taking place during the academic year, we cannot offer any rooms in the college.
We have been offered a discounted rate on some rooms at a branch of the Travelodge hotel chain that is very near to our campus:
https://www.travelodge.ie/about-us/international-yeats-society-conference-2025/
Other than this, some possible nearby hotel options include:
Staycity apartment hotels can be relatively good value, especially if sharing with several other people, and they have some branches very near the college
The Premier Inn chain has several branches in the city, including one very near the college
The Leonardo chain has several branches in the city
https://www.leonardo-hotels.com/
The Maldron chain also has several branches in the city
Hostels near to Trinity include:
https://www.ashfieldhostel.com/
https://www.abigailshostel.com/
Please click below for information on the venue, transport, food & drink and things to do!
Registration for the conference has now closed.