We begin the week with a look at the campaign to save the Yeats Society Sligo and the poet BenJamin Zephaniah”s plea for everyone to turn vegan.

Campaign to Save Yeats Society Sligo Supported by Poets

The Yeats Society Sligo, named for the poet WB Yeats, has been helping to promote tourism and culture for the last 60 years. Now, they find themselves in dire straights and estimate that they need €100,000 in order to survive.

The events of the last 18 months have had a devastating effect on the societies finances, and they are currently facing imminent closure. They have estimated that if they do not manage to raise the €100,000 by August then they will need to close, and this will mean losing this important link to the literary heritage of the area.

The poets and celebrities who have lent their names to the campaign include Paul Muldoon, Jessica Traynor – who has spent time working as the poet in residence for the Yeats Society Sligo, Caitriona Yeats the grand-daughter of the poet, Catherine Heaney the daughter of another of Ireland”s important poets, Seamus Heaney, and Paula Meehan who is also a poet.

They are all hoping that the work that is being done to raise the money that is needed will be enough to help save the society.

We All Need to go Vegan!

During his appearance on BBC Question Time on Thursday last week the poet Benjamin Zephaniah told the audience that “Coronavirus will keep coming “till we go vegan”. He believes that the virus in its various mutations will continue to jump from animals to humans and then this will have a major impact on the relationship between the two and the environment.

He said that it was time for the entire world to become vegans in order to ensure that there is no next coronavirus pandemic. Zephaniah, who has been a vegan for over 27 years, has famously been quoted in the past as saying he would never ram veganism down other people’s throats, but would rather spread the message gently, said that he is really worried about what might happen in the future.

He did go on to say that as a society we have always had to live with viruses but that since man began to get the saliva, blood and liquids of animals on themselves these have got worse. He also said that if people don’t change it will continue and we will need to live with a lot more in the future.

This isn’t the first time that the passionate poet has brought up the subject of veganism on Question Time.

He also went on to say how much he was hoping that we would soon be able to live in a world where we could hug each other again, go out, party and start to enjoy life without worrying about the possibility of catching the virus or passing it on to someone without even knowing that we had it in the first place.