William Butler Yeats“At Galway Races” was written in Coole Park, Lady Gregory's house, in 1908 after the poet had spent a day at the Galway Race Meeting. That is over a century ago but the wish it expresses is the same as that expressed by the new Minister for the Arts in Ireland, Heather Humphries, in a recent radio interview. It is a wish that is shared by virtually all artists, literary and otherwise, however 'elitist' they're supposed to be: "Art for everybody." And it is one that Yeats expressed often in prose and poetry.

AT GALWAY RACES