Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland was an influential and important Irish poet. Boland was active from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first century. She is often recognised for her significant contributions to the canon of Irish poetry, particularly as a pioneering female figure. Below is a summary of Boland's biography and an overview of some of her best-known poems. You will also find an analysis of key themes in Boland's work, some facts about the poet, and a table of quotes.

Fig. 1 - Eavan Boland is a highly influential female poet from Dublin, Ireland.

Eavan Boland: biography

Eavan Boland was born on 24th September 1944 in Dublin. Boland's mother, Frances, was a painter and her father, Frederick, was a diplomat. Boland spent the first few years of her life in Dublin. Because of her father's career, the family moved to London for a period and then to New York. Her experiences in London made Boland acutely aware of her Irish identity and anti-Irish discrimination in Britain. These would go on to be influential topics in Boland's work.

The Boland family returned to Ireland when Eavan Boland was fourteen. She attended secondary school in Killiney, Dublin, from this age onwards. Boland later noted that her time away from Ireland made her feel like somewhat of an outsider as a teenager. She then attended Trinity College Dublin, studying English Literature and Language. In her first year of university, Boland used money from her job as a hotel housekeeper to self-publish her first collection of poetry, 23 Poems (1962). While studying English, Boland noted the severe lack of female authors and poets on the curriculum, particularly from an Irish background. She resolved to change this.

After graduating, Boland held multiple teaching positions. She also worked as a reviewer for The Irish Times. Boland's first complete collection of poetry, New Territory, was published in 1967. This received mixed critical reviews. Two years later, in 1969, Boland married Kevin Casey. The couple would go on to have two daughters.

Boland's next poetry collection, The War Horse, came in 1975. Following this, In Her Own Image (1980) and Night Feed (1982) proved to be two significant collections for Boland. They are noted for their exploration of the subjugated position of Irish women. Boland also explored Irish history and mythology in these collections, which would become defining topics in Boland's poetry.

Next came Outside History in 1990 and In a Time of Violence in 1994. In a Time of Violence reflected Boland's frustration with the lack of inclusivity in the Irish literary canon for women. She felt there had been little progression since she was a university student. In 1996, Boland took up a teaching job at Stanford University, moving to America for a time.

Some of Boland's more recent poetic collections include Against Love Poetry (2001), Domestic Violence (2007), and A Woman Without a Country (2014). Boland passed away from a stroke in 2020 at the age of seventy-five.

Eavan Boland had won multiple awards and honours for her work by her death. She is now regarded as a pioneering figure in twentieth-century Irish literature. Boland discussed issues that were often taboo in Irish society. She also undertook in-depth explorations of Irish history and mythology. Her critics respect Boland for her honesty in depicting the experiences of ordinary Irish women at a time when this was uncommon.

Eavan Boland: poems

We will now take a look at Eavan Boland's significant poems.

Eavan Boland: 'The Famine Road' (1975)

'The Famine Road' is a poem that constructs two concurrent narratives. The first depicts the English imperialist view of Ireland during the Potato Famine and how the Irish population suffered. Boland's second narrative in 'The Famine Road' follows a conversation between a woman and her doctor as she discovers she is infertile. Boland compares the two stories and creates similarities between them. It is an eight-stanza poem with a varying rhyme scheme that appears in Boland's The War Horse collection.

Boland situates 'The Famine Road' immediately into history by referencing real historical figures in the poem. The Trevelyan mentioned in the first stanza is Charles Edward Trevelyan, a British government official notorious for his cruelty towards the Irish people during the Famine. Boland emphasises this cruelty throughout 'The Famine Road' in her graphic imagery of the suffering of Irish people. This suffering is seen in the below quote.

The title of 'The Famine Road' refers to a real phenomenon during the Irish Famine. Famine roads were roads that British occupiers forced the Irish people to build. These roads usually had no purpose and went nowhere. Irish people were forced to labour on them to earn enough money to buy a small amount of food to survive.

Every second stanza in 'The Famine Road' centres around the story of the woman discovering she is infertile. Her doctor seems callous and uncaring. This parallels the English's treatment of the Irish in Boland's poem. In the final stanza of 'The Famine Road', Boland directly compares famine roads that lead nowhere and this woman who cannot have children. We can see this in the following quote.

Eavan Boland: 'Anorexic' (1980)

'Anorexic' is a poem consisting of fifteen short stanzas. The poem comes from Boland's collection, In Her Own Image. This collection made a distinct effort to capture the female experience, and 'Anorexic' is no different, centring around a female narrator suffering from anorexia and its complications.

The narrator of 'Anorexic' writes in the first person. This woman shows that she is attempting to gain control by limiting what she eats so severely. Boland brings in religion by using the word 'heretic' in the first stanza of her poem.

The narrator sees her body as something shameful that must be controlled. She controls her weight by refusing to eat. Boland also connects the punishment she is enacting on her body with a sense of righteous justice, as if her body were a heretic deserving torture or execution. Ireland in the 1980s was a deeply Catholic country and women's bodies were often shamed in the name of religion. Boland is referencing this here.

A significant thing to note about 'Anorexic' is its honest tone. Boland uses explicit and blunt language to describe the struggles of one suffering from an eating disorder. At the time of publishing in 1980, such topics would have been extremely taboo in Irish society. These were also topics that impacted women as there was much social pressure on them to look a certain way. Boland's honest addressing of the pain of anorexia can be seen in the quote below.

Eavan Boland: themes

Let's now move on to look at some common themes found in Eavan Boland's work.

Eavan Boland: Ireland

As an Irish writer, it is unsurprising that Ireland is important in Eavan Boland's poetry. Boland particularly focuses on Irish history as well as modern Irish society and all its flaws.

Boland incorporates many elements of Irish history and mythology in her poetry. This is clear in 'The Famine Road'. Boland accurately and brutally depicts the suffering inflicted on Irish people during the Famine in this poem. She uses vivid imagery to get this across. She also parallels this with the much more modern problem of a (presumably Irish) woman discovering she is infertile. Boland, therefore, links the Ireland of the past to present Ireland.

The poem 'The Emigrant Irish' (1990) deals with the common Irish issue of emigration. Irish emigration was a particularly severe issue in the twentieth century. Boland deals with the complicated topic of identity for one who has left their home country. She also addresses the hardship of emigration, as we can see below.

In her poetry, Boland addresses issues of Irish history and often brings the mistreatment of Irish people to the forefront. However, she also details the problems of modern Irish society at her time of writing.

Eavan Boland: women

As a young student studying literature, Eavan Boland noted the lack of women in the literary canon, particularly the Irish literary canon. As a female writer, she resolved to change this. She decided to write poetry that focused on women and their issues, instead of treating them as objects of male desire, as was common in male poetry.

In representing the female experience, Boland often discussed taboos and controversial topics when she was writing and publishing. 'Anorexic' involves detailed depictions of the realities of eating disorders. Although not exclusively, these disorders often particularly impacted women as there was strong social pressure for women to look a certain way when Boland was writing.

These would not have been commonly discussed topics at the time but Eavan Boland writes on them in a brutally honest manner. She explains anorexia from the perspective of one suffering through it, helping readers to understand the disorder.

'Woman in Kitchen' (1982) addresses women's issues in 1980s Ireland. It depicts a housewife and the oppression she feels from being trapped in this position. All this woman has for company are her household appliances, and she feels that even they have more purpose than she does. Boland also repeats the word 'white' multiple times in 'Woman in Kitchen', building the sense of an oppressive atmosphere.

Boland concludes this poem by relating the overly white kitchen to a 'mortuary'. This is not a space where this woman is comfortable. Boland uses quite an unsettling tone in portraying a housewife simply in her kitchen. This challenged the idea that women should remain in the domestic space.

Eavan Boland: facts

Let's have a look at some facts about Eavan Boland!

• Eavan Boland was the youngest of five children.

• Boland's husband, Kevin Casey, was a novelist.

• W.B. Yeats was Boland's first literary hero. She began reading his work as a way to feel more connected to Ireland after returning from New York as a teenager.

• Boland used Sylvia Plath's work as inspiration to help her write about womanhood in her poetry.

• On St. Patrick's Day 2016, then-President Barack Obama quoted lines from Eavan Boland's poem 'On a Thirtieth Anniversary' (2001) in his speech from the White House.

Eavan Boland: quotes

Now we will consider some important quotes from Boland's work.