About Us

Founded in 1990, the W.B. Yeats Society of N.Y. quickly became one of New York’s largest and most ambitious organizations dedicated to the life and work of a particular writer.

 

The Society sponsors an annual international poetry competition, shares links to other Yeats-related sites, informs Americans about the Yeats International Summer School in Ireland, and assists in establishing other Yeats societies in the United States.

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The Executive Board

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Alison Armstrong, Ph.D.

John J Casey, Ph.D.

Erskine Childers

Emily Dunlap

Kate Gill

Andrew McGowan

Carolyn McGuire, Ph.D.

Doris Marie Meyer

Maureen O. Murphy, Ph.D.

E.J. Vega.

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News

2023 Yeats Poetry Prize Announced

Submission Period: Nov. 1-Feb. 1  

Awards: $1,000, $500, Honorable Mentions

Judge: Poet Alan Feldman (biography below)

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SUBMISSION RULES

The competition is open to members and non-members of any age, from any locality. Deadline for submissions is Feb. 1, 2023. Awards will be announced in early March and presented in early April during National Poetry Month.

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• First prize $1,000, second $500, Honorable Mentions.

• Winners also receive two-year memberships in the Society and are honored at a special event, which typically includes a public reading at Barnes and Noble, Union Square, Manhattan, and a private dinner with the judge and Society board members at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park.

• Poems in English up to 60 lines, on any subject, not published at the time of submission, may be entered. We prefer entry through the Submittable website at Yeats.Submittable.com. Submit between Nov. 1, 2022, and Feb. 1, 2023.

• Do not include author information in the poems themselves, but enter name, contact information and a short bio in the Submittable entry form, which we recommend and much prefer. This is a blind competition. We do everything we can to ensure the judge does not know who the entrants are.

• If required, postal entries may be sent to the Society's address (check made out to WB Yeats Society of NY). Each poem must be on separate sheets of paper without the author's information. Put that information on a 3x5 card attached to each poem.

• Entry fees are $15 for the first poem and $12 for each additional. Fees are used to help underwrite the annual competition, which is managed by Society volunteers.

• Normally, the judge makes decisions by the end of February or early March. Winners will be notified by email and/or phone. Winners will also be announced on the Society’s website and Facebook pages and in a news announcement to poetry publications and associations.

• Authors retain rights to their submissions but grant us the right to publish winning entries. NOTE: Winning poems accepted for publication elsewhere may require permission from the publisher.

• These are the complete rules for the 2023 competition.

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Alan Feldman Biography: Over more than sixty years, Alan has published poetry in such prestigious publications as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best American Poetry. He has also won several prizes, including the 1978 George Elliston Book Award for The Happy Genius as the best poetry collection published that year by a small, independent press; the 2004 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin for A Sail to Great Island; the Massachusetts Book Award in 2016 for Immortality; and the Four Lakes Prize from the University of Wisconsin for his 2018 collection, The Golden Coin. From 1972 to 2008, Alan was a professor (and eventually chair) in the English Department at Framingham State University (Massachusetts), and for 22 years he taught the Advanced Creative Writing seminar at the Radcliffe Seminars, Harvard University. He lives in Framingham with his wife, the artist Nan Hass Feldman. 

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2022 Poetry Prize Winners Announced

We are delighted to announce that prize judge Ann Kjellberg has selected winning entries and submitted her report, available here.

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Ann Kjellberg, 2022 judge, was literary executor for 1987 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Joseph Brodsky, and editor of Mr. Brodsky’s “Collected Poems in English” and “Selected Poems 1968-1996.” Ms. Kjellberg is founding editor of the literary magazine Little Star and served on the New York Review of Books’ editorial staff for almost 30 years.

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Message to Members & Followers

 

Dear Yeatsians,

 

It should come as no surprise that the Yeats Society, like other nonprofit associations, has been hindered in our programming by the pandemic.

 

We want you to know that we continue to operate, but we have had to deemphasize in-person programs out of an abundance of caution for our members and friends who would normally attend. We will let you know when we resume programs. Most immediately, we hope to return to our year-end holiday dinner in December. Stay tuned.

 

In the meantime, please consult our website and Facebook pages for news and information about Yeats and related matters: Yeats Society of NY and WB Yeats Society of New York | Facebook. Stay in touch with the wider world of Yeatsians in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

In particular, read the announcement and report on the 2022 Yeats Poetry Prize, which you will find on the home page of our website (the URL is now www.YeatsSociety.nyc, not YeatsSociety.org). The report contains the names and winning submissions of the recipients, along with information on how to apply for the 2023 prizes by the February 1 deadline.

 

Feel free to post other Yeats news and information on the Facebook site. The instructions should be clear. Please, though, only items about Yeats or related historical or literary events, essays, announcements, poems, etc. If you prefer, you may send items for posting to Don Bates at batesdon1@msn.com.

 

Membership Status

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Throughout the pandemic, we have not pushed membership renewals or contributions, but we invited Yeatsians to help support our purposes and activities as follows:

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• Renew your membership for the next year (or join our Society) for the special pandemic rate of only $10.

• And/or, make a 2022-2023 contribution: they're tax-deductible.

 

To do either send a check to us, made out to the W.B. Yeats Society of NY, c/o the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC, 10003. We will send you an appropriate receipt.

 

Whether you join or contribute, we will keep you on our postal and email lists and consider you part of our community.

 

Thank you for participating in the Yeats Society and for furthering interest in our namesake’s legacy.

 

The Executive Board: Alison Armstrong Ph.D., John J Casey Ph.D., Erskine Childers, Emily Dunlap, Kate Gill, Andrew McGowan, Carolyn McGuire Ph.D., Doris Marie Meyer, Maureen O. Murphy Ph.D., E.J. Vega.

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