William Bulter Yeats is one of the most popular and dominant Irish poets of the 20th century. He has been popularized in song, drama, and through his own numerous works. Yeats began to write poetry in the 1880's. Yeat's goal was to create strongly lyrical poetry. Yeat's poetry is filled with with details of rural Irish life. Often they are set in traditional forms: the ballad, the lyric, lament, and verse tale. Yeats himself was born in Sandymount, near Dublin, on June 13th, 1865. He spent most of his life in London, with trips to Sligo during the summer. In 1923 he was award a Nobel Prize for Literature. Yeats died on January 28th, 1933.
Source:
Miller, Stuart. Selected Poems of William Bulter Yeats. Barnes and Noble, Inc. 1994.