There is always something new to be learned here, even when you're Seamus Heaney, writes Rosita Boland, in Sligo for the 44th Yeats Summer School

Swans are the bird most associated with Yeats, but it was the duck that first came to mind yesterday morning when a fierce electrical storm passed over Sligo, bringing with it pounding rain and forked lightening.

In the Hawk's Well Theatre, where Nicola Gordon Bowe of the National College of Art and Design was giving the Yeats Summer School's second paper of the morning, entitled "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland; the Yeats Connections", her slide presentation was dramatically interrupted by lightening.

The theatre lights flickered, piped music started playing unexpectedly and the slide she was showing became distorted on screen as it burnt in the projector. Her audience were enthralled by the coincidence of the timing: it just so happens that the slide Ms Gordon Bowe was showing at the time was of an AE painting of the Sidhe fairy woman. Yeats, with his famous interest in the occult, would have loved it.

"It was like the Sidhe was making a final effort to get out of the painting," Jonathan Allison, academic director of this year's school, said later. "This will become part of the Yeats Summer School mythology," declared Michael Keohane, president of the Yeats Society.

This is the 44th year of the Yeats Summer School. Last year, it was in serious financial difficulties, due to a large drop in bookings post-September 11th, 2001. However, the people of Sligo dug deep and came up with the necessary €18,000. This year's numbers are double on last year, with 112 students registered. The American intake, mostly college students, is about 60 per cent, according to chairwoman Maura McTighe.

There is a sizeable Irish contingent also, particularly from Northern Ireland. The Irish tend to be older, and non-academic, people who simply come because they like Yeats' poems. Jonathan Allison says this audience mix is a challenge for lecturers, many of whom are prominent Yeats scholars, and who have to engage both camps.

The school has attracted dozens of famous academics and writers including Frank Kermode, Richard Ellmann, Patrick Rafroidi, Hiro Ishibashi, Tyrone Guthrie, Ted Hughes, Mary Lavin, Louis MacNeice, Frank O'Connor and Erskine Childers.

While many speakers from early years are now dead, their contributions endure. Every lecture since the school started in 1960 has been filmed: this remarkable archive is stored in Sligo's Yeats Memorial Building.

"We're hoping to have someone come in with us a joint venture to put them on CD," Michael Keohane says.

Since the artist Anne Yeats, the poet's only daughter, died last year, the school wanted to mark her passing in some appropriate way. They have done it by specially programming two lectures on visual arts; Nicola Gordon Bowe's paper yesterday, and former Irish Times art critic, Brian Fallon, on "Anne Yeats and Irish Modernist Art", which he will give on Friday at 9.30 a.m.

Later on Friday, at 8.30p.m. - also in the Hawk's Well Theatre - is one of the most anticipated events of the fortnight when Belfast-born Sam McCready directs the Yeats play, The Death of Cúchulain, performed by the Summer School's drama workshop. Among this year's other speakers was distinguished Harvard academic, Helen Vendler, and Ann Saddlemyer of the University of Toronto, whose biography of George Yeats was recently published.

It seems that there is always something new to be learned from Yeats. Even when you're a famous poet yourself: both Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin were in the audience for the Vendler lecture.

Yeats Summer School participants will tour Lissadell House, the family home of Countess Markievicz, today. Rosita Boland's account of the visit will be published tomorrow.