Every poet has, surely, their own Land of Heart’s Desire. For Nobel-Prize-winning poet WB Yeats the sublime landscape and legends of the West of Ireland inspired his early work. But poets need a network of publishing, poetry groups, friends, and literary-&-artistic connections in which to thrive, and Yeats’s unique genius was fostered in the unique and curious 19c garden-suburb/artists’ colony that was Bedford Park, in Chiswick, West London, where he spent much of his youth.
Join Irish poet and critic Cahal Dallat (founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, who has lectured on WB Yeats for Poetry Society, Sligo’s Yeats International Summer School, Mapping Yeats 2015 at UMKC, WBY Society at NYU etc) for a Sunday stroll round Yeats’s favourite haunts, by way of Upper Mall, along Thames riverside by Old Chiswick Churchyard to Bedford Park, taking in, en route, Pissarro, Pope, Thackeray, O’Connell, Wm. Morris, Whistler, Stepniak, Shaw, Holst, Henley, other Yeatses, actors, anarchists, occultists, typographers, and much more.