Selected Poems

Boland Eavan

This is a book not of memorable lines but of memorable poems. Eavan Boland's poetry is radically different in tone and texture from the work of her Irish contemporaries. Her concerns are never parochial. In 1979 she renounced "the evasion out of fear from some realities, and the folly of that evasion, because the realities catch up with you". Her poems are brave in quest of those realities, finding a language in which to engage them.

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.

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