William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Dublin, but Sligo became the landscape of his imagination. His mother's family lived there, and the stories, folklore, and countryside he encountered in his childhood would remain with him throughout his life.

Yeats helped lead the Irish Literary Revival, drawing on Irish mythology, folklore, history, and legend to create a distinctly Irish literary tradition. Alongside Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, he was instrumental in the creation of the Abbey Theatre.

His poetry moved between the ancient and the modern, the personal and the political. Ireland's struggle for independence, the Easter Rising, love, aging, death, and the passage of time all found their way into his work.

In 1923, Yeats received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yet perhaps his greatest legacy is simpler: he helped give Ireland a poetic voice that could speak to the world without losing its roots in Irish soil.