Fiction

about my novels and life as a novelist

WB Yeats Poems Inspired By Iseult Gonne

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White bird Symbol of Maud Gonne & Iseult Gonne
White bird: a symbol in Yeats's poetry for both Iseult & Maud Gonne

In “A Memory of Youth” Yeats acknowledged how his poetic inspiration had dried until the intervention of “a most ridiculous little bird [who] Tore from the skies his marvelous moon.”

The little bird was Iseult Gonne, who saw herself as both pupil and teacher to Yeats.

Their friendship was founded on intellectual and spiritual connection and an attempt by Yeats’ to cast her in the role of muse from which her mother had disqualified herself.

At the time of his romantic attachment to Iseult, When he was seriously considering her as a wife (1916 to 1918), Yeats was working on the first volume of his autobiographies – reliving his infatuation for the mother while becoming

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Who To Follow On Twitter: WB Yeats, Maud Gonne and Iseult Gonne

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Willie, Maud and Iseult, three of the most imaginative people who ever lived, never imagined the Internet or Twitter.

If they were alive today, I imagine Maud would leap on Twitter for PR purposes, Iseult would shun it, and Willie would dismiss it for a time, with a lofty air of Parnassus, for the low-brow level of the conversation and the low-bred emotion of the crowd… but then be drawn in by finding his own way to use it.

I like to tweet regularly about Yeats and the Gonnes, as I find interesting new information about their life and work. You can follow those tweets here.

And here's a Storify list of people to follow if you're interested in learning more:

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Why WB Yeats, Maud Gonne and Iseult Gonne?

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Iseult Gonne
Iseult Gonne

I wrote last time about first hearing of the strange love triangle between WB Yeats, Maud Gonne and her daughter, Iseult.

Iseult is less well known than her mother though her life story is equally dramatic, in a different sort of way. Born on August 6, 1894, she was the only surviving child from Maud's thirteen-year affair with a married
French politician and journalist, Lucien Millevoye.

She lived with Maud who passed her off, variously, as her niece, her cousin, or as “a charming child I adopted”. But she did know Lucien and he acknowledged her as his daughter, if not publicly.

It was an inauspicious start to life and Iseult struggled with issues of identity and self-worth always.

Most of my novels begin with a question. Here, the question was: how could Yeats, who had carved a poetic career from writing about his unrequited love for Maud find himself, some years on, proposing marriage to his muse's daughter? To a girl almost 30 years his junior, and one to whom he had long acted in locus parentis?

Other extraordinary connections between these three characters include:

  • In 1890, Maud Gonne had a son with Lucien Millevoye, who died of meningitis. Yeats and his mystical friend AE had convinced Maud it would be possible to reincarnate a dead person by having ritual sex in their tomb. So she on Hallowe'en night 1893, she brought

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WB Yeats And His Family Have Lunch

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WB Yeats
WB Yeats
Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne

Here's a sneak peek at the novel I'm working on now, The Pilgrim Soul. It's the first in a trilogy about love and  loss, based around the lives of the poet, WB Yeats, and the mother and daughter he loved, Maud and Iseult Gonne.

The time is Christmas Day, 1893 and WB, or Willie as his family like to call him, is at Christmas lunch with them. In his late twenties, he is still living at home but beginning to make a name for himself as a poet of Ireland, a mystic whose childhood days in his mother's home county of Sligo inspire lyrical celebrations of  mountain and cloud, lake and moon, wind and stars.

Below the extract is one of my favourites of his poems from those early years, for its dreamy imagery and what it tells us about his attachment to sorrow. Were alienation and separation ever more lyrically expressed?

It began harmless enough, with Papa starting a Christmas speech on the state of the family, of how Jack was soon to marry and become a substantial man, with a cheerful kind-hearted wife and an open-handed welcome for his friends. This was a less-than-subtle hint towards what they all know, that Jack’s fiancée is tying up her money so Papa won’t be able to get his hands on any of it.

Papa's self-serving cheerfulness was already wilting Willie’s spirits, even before he turned his glass on him.  “And Willie will be famous and shed a bright light on us all, with sometimes a little money and sometimes not.” Papa drank, deeply and with significance, then sat, signifying the end of the toast. Lolly’s face reddened and his other sister, Lily, reached over to pat her hand, a gesture that only doubled Lolly’s fury. Papa noticed then and hastily stood back up.  “And Lolly will have a prosperous school and give away as prizes her eminent brother’s volumes of poetry.” This, naturally, only enraged her the more.  At that moment, Maria arrived in and plunked the plate of potatoes on the table.When he reached for one with his fork, his belligerent sister turned her wrath upon him: “You might wait for grace, Willie.  You might

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Irish Secrets of The Past Uncovered

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Exciting news from Ireland (for history nerds).  Secrets of the 1916 Easter Rising and War of Independence have been revealed by a new project from The Bureau of Military History that focusses on eyewitness accounts of the time.

How I would have loved these to have been available when I was researching my first novel. In those days, I had to hunt deep – in the National Library, museum of military history, University College Dublin Archives and other archival sources, for accounts of what had actually happened. So much myth and legend surrounds those times in Ireland, with so many commentators having

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Friday Fiction: I'm No Traitor

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AFTER THE RISING. EPISODE SIX: I'm No Traitor

The story so far: Jo Devereux is back in Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up, for her mother’s funeral. In her will, her mother’s has bequeathed a pile of family papers and asked Jo to write about her family’s part in the Irish liberation struggle. Jo is fascinated by what she finds in these papers. But what part did her family really play in that struggle? Why did Dan O'Donovan die? And what does it all  mean for her relationship with Rory O’Donovan, Dan's nephew, whom she swore she'd never let back into her life?

You can read previous chapters HERE.

They are unmaking the house. From the door of the shed, I stand and watch the diggers trundle their mechanical dance around the building: forwards and backwards, claws up, claws down, buckets full, buckets empty. Drills puncture the walls and bricks that have supported each other for more than a hundred years fall apart.

On and on it goes, day after day. Inside, steel struts brace the structure they want to retain, stop the whole from collapsing.

I watch the work from my cowshed. Here is where I live now, inside a strange

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Friday Fiction. Going Under.

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AFTER THE RISING. EPISODE FIVE: GOING UNDER

The story so far: Jo Devereux is back in Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up, for her mother's funeral. In her will, her mother’s has bequeathed a pile of family papers and asked her to write about her family's part in the Irish liberation struggle in 1922.   It might suit Jp to stay on and take refuge from the raddled life she's been living in San Francisco since her friend Richard died. But how can she, now that the family pub and shop is to be sold?  And when Rory O’Donovan, the only man she ever really loved, still lives there with his wife and children and seems to think they can be friends?

You can read previous chapters HERE.

Now Read On: After Rory’s gone I go to the sitting room and slide the pictures of my eighteen-year-old self out of their envelope, to look again at this girl with her unlined face and body, to look and look until I can’t see her image any more, until it blurs and clears and mists again.  At some point I fall asleep staring into her wildly glittering eyes.

I wake with

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Chapter 4. Jo Shares Her Secret.

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The story so far: Jo Devereux is back in Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up. Her mother's dying request is that she will stay on and write a family history, from the pile of family papers she's bequeathed her about the Irish liberation struggle in 1922. Life back in San Francisco is not ideal for Jo but how can she stay on in Mucknamore, when she has never fitted in? And when Rory O’Donovan, the only man she ever really loved, lives there with his wife and children and seems to think they can now be friends, despite all that happened.

You can read previous chapters HERE.

Now READ ON:

Over, yes. But now this compulsion to write about it and live it again. And I have to start with that awful night in San Francisco with Dee, just before I heard that Mrs D. was dying.

I don’t want to remember myself, walking along the solid city sidewalk, through air thickening with the smell of food.  Or Dee and I, sitting at our usual table outside Benton’s, heads leaning into each other over bowls of pasta, while the sky faded from blue to purple, and lights sprang on across the city, their sense of promise making me ache, so that the night stretched

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After The Rising 3. Never Say Never.

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The story so far: Jo Devereux has returned to Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up, for her mother's funeral after an absence of 20 years. There she reconnects with her sister Maeve and her ex-boyfriend, Rory O'Donovan, the only man she has ever loved, who caused the rift between her and her family. Now read on:

‘So, Dev,’ he says, after my sister has made her excuses and scuttled away. ‘What’s going on? Why are you receiving us in bed, like a courtesan? You don’t look sick to me. You look better than ever.’

As he’s talking, he’s pulling out the chair from the corner and bringing it over, close to the bed. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. Lying low, avoiding the mob. Avoiding me too, you brat.’

Brat-sh. The soft Irish T. He sounds so Wexford to my ears now, such a strong streak of Mucknamore in his accent: the nasal vowels, the singing rise and fall to his sentences. But of course it’s my speech that has changed, not his. I am stuck again by the newness of him, the short hair that makes him look unfinished.

‘It’s all a bit Mucknamore for me.’

‘I knew it.’

‘I hear you’re a full fledged resident now.’ I speak as if I only heard today, as if Maeve and Dee, my Wexford friend who also lives in SF, hadn’t passed on everything they knew about him since I left. ‘Was the progressive liberalism that drew you? Or the cultural stimulation?’

‘No need to sneer, city girl. It’s a good place to live.’

I raise my brows into a question. The Rory I knew could not have

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