Madam, - With all due respect, Anthony Jordan (June 21st) gives a false impression of the Yeats International Summer School (June 21st). He claims the school caters for "international undergraduates and academics to study Yeats's literary work" but students from all walks of life are welcomed at and regularly attend the school.
This includes general readers of literature, working people of all sorts, retired persons, as well as a significant number of postgraduate students from Ireland, the UK and further afield.
Furthermore, the poet's work - including the political and public dimensions of that work - is studied not in isolation but in the wider context of his life and times, including his relations with other writers, thinkers and public figures.
As for "relatively little attention" being paid to the theme of Yeats as a "maker of modern Ireland", I beg to differ. The poet's contribution to the culture and identity of modern Ireland is implicit in many lectures and seminars given at the school, and has been one of the key notions in much of the criticism of Yeats writings during the last 50 years.
For explicit treatment of this theme, one need look no further than Prof Terence Brown's seminar to be delivered this summer on "Yeats as a Public Poet" or the lecture delivered last year by Prof RF Foster, authorised biographer of the poet.
Mr Jordan expresses the wish that there was "more involvement for those who attend its public lectures".
Students at the Yeats Summer School enjoy up to 40 "contact hours" with their teachers during the fortnight and have plenty of opportunity for conversation, both among themselves and with lecturers.
Members of the audience may certainly ask questions after lectures.
A public question-and-answer session with all lecturers has been a regular feature of the school and will be held this coming August in the Yeats Memorial Building. - Yours, etc,
JONATHAN ALLISON, Director, Yeats Summer School, Sligo.