Citizen Poet
New and Selected Essays
Costa Poetry Award 2020
Irish PEN Award for Literature 2019
Bob Hughes Lifetime Award 2017
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 1994
Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry 1994
At her death in 2020, Eavan Boland left a formidable body of work – poems and prose. Together they transformed Irish poetry and had a considerable impact throughout the English-speaking world. She was also a major feminist thinker and essayist. She challenged and changed Irish culture and society, and her challenge remains potent. This collection of her most important essays combines autobiographical and critical reflections on the events and influences that shaped her life and work. It includes work never before collected, as well as draft chapters of the memoir "Daughter" that she was working on when she died. The book, published on what would have been Eavan Boland's 80th birthday, opens with substantial extracts from "Object Lessons: the life of the woman and the poet in our times" (1995), including the key essays "Outside History" and "The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma". From "A Journey with Two Maps: becoming a woman poet" (2011) the editors have selected the title essay and "Becoming an Irish Poet", "Domestic Violence" and the celebrated "Letter to a Young Woman Poet".
Irish PEN Award for Literature 2019
Bob Hughes Lifetime Award 2017
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 1994
Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry 1994
At her death in 2020, Eavan Boland left a formidable body of work – poems and prose. Together they transformed Irish poetry and had a considerable impact throughout the English-speaking world. She was also a major feminist thinker and essayist. She challenged and changed Irish culture and society, and her challenge remains potent. This collection of her most important essays combines autobiographical and critical reflections on the events and influences that shaped her life and work. It includes work never before collected, as well as draft chapters of the memoir "Daughter" that she was working on when she died. The book, published on what would have been Eavan Boland's 80th birthday, opens with substantial extracts from "Object Lessons: the life of the woman and the poet in our times" (1995), including the key essays "Outside History" and "The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma". From "A Journey with Two Maps: becoming a woman poet" (2011) the editors have selected the title essay and "Becoming an Irish Poet", "Domestic Violence" and the celebrated "Letter to a Young Woman Poet".
About the author
Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She has taught at Trinity College, University College and Bowdoin College Dublin, and at the University of Iowa. She is currently Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's previous works include "The Journey and other poems" (1987), "Night Feed" (1994), "The Lost Land" (1998) and "Code" (2001). Her poems and essays have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She is a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She divides her time between California and Dublin where she lives with her husband, the novelist Kevin Casey.