About Us
The W.B. Yeats Society of New York
We are a literary society, founded June 13, 1990, on the poet’s 125th birthday, by Andrew McGowan, currently president. The Society quickly became one of New York’s largest and most ambitious organizations dedicated to the life and work of a particular writer. It sponsors an international poetry competition (see Awards), 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 US.
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Poet January O’Neil Named 2024 Yeats Poetry Prize Judge
Award-winning poet January Gill O’Neil has been selected as judge for the 2024 Yeats Poetry Prize. First prize is $1,000, second prize is $500. There are also honorable mentions. Don Bates, this year’s Yeats Poetry Prize coordinator, said, “We are excited to have another distinguished poet judge our annual prize in honor of our namesake.”
Ms. O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University (Salem, MA) and author of Glitter Road (forthcoming, February 2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Sierra, among publications. Her poem “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial” was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry award.
Ms. O’Neil has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. From 2019-2020, she was John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, and currently serves as 2022-2023 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writers Programs (AWP). She earned her BA from Old Dominion University and her MFA from New York University. She lives in Beverly, MA, with her two children.
See the Awards entry on this site for the 2024 Yeats Poetry Prize Guidelines.
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2023 Yeats Poetry Prize Winners Announced
Judge for the 2023 competition was poet Alan Feldman, author of “The Happy Genius,” “A Sail to Great Island,” “Immortality,” and “The Golden Coin,” among other books of poems. His latest volume, “In the First Half-Century that I’ve Loved You, Poems from a Marriage,” will be published this year with paintings by his wife, artist Nan Hass Feldman. From 1972 to 2008, Mr. Feldman was professor and chair in the English Department at Framingham State University (Massachusetts) and for 22 years taught “Advanced Creative Writing” at the Radcliffe Seminars, Harvard University.
See Mr. Feldman's report, which includes the winning poems, on the Awards Page of this website.
2024 COMPETITION WILL BEGIN NOV. 1ST
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WB Yeats Society of NY
Objectives
-To act as an educational forum, primarily through lectures and events, for exchanging information about William Butler Yeats, his legacy and literary work, and people, places, events, and ideas that shaped his life and work.
-To stimulate awareness of and interest in WB Yeats's life and work.
-To provide information about Yeats events and organizations, particularly the Yeats International Summer School in Ireland and its sponsor, the Sligo-based Yeats Society, and other Yeats societies that, like ours, grew out of the summer school and Sligo society.
Executive Board
Andrew McGowan, President
Alison Armstrong, Ph.D.
Don Bates
Erskine Childers
Emily Dunlap
Kate Gill
Doris Marie Meyer
Maureen O. Murphy, Ph.D.
Eddie Vega
Emeritus
John J. Casey, Ph.D.
Carolyn McGuire, Ph.D.
