A tribute to Eavan Boland

My head is full with Eavan Boland this evening. She has left us too soon, (she passed away suddenly yesterday at the age of 75), and the country is in mourning for its great national poet. After years of enjoying her poetry, I felt blessed to finally meet her in the Summer of 2018, when I was one of eight poets selected to participate in a masterclass she was leading for Poetry Ireland during the Kilkenny Arts Festival. When Eavan entered the room, there was a palpable hush of admiration. During the next two hours, Eavan rigorously assessed and dissected a poem by each of us. To observe a master at work is always a privilege and a delight. We were all deeply impressed by her incisiveness and verbal acuity as a brilliant “line editor” – the term she humbly applied to herself that day. She only had to appraise our drafts quickly to grasp the core of the piece and what it had the potential to become. 

Eavan Boland (1944-2020) RIP

Magnanimously, she also invited us to send her one additional poem by email after the workshop, to which she would respond soon with suggestions. On 27 August 2018 I was fortunate to receive a considered reply in which she wrote with gentle encouragement about one of my stanzas: “I know that making a cut can be painful. But there might be some argument for making it here.” She also found the Achilles heel of my draft – a didactic tendency in the exposition – and wrote the following: “In summary there really is so much of worth and energy in this poem that I think it would really benefit from revision. Didacticism is a temptation for every single poet, and is worth resisting! But without it there is an eloquent strong poem here.” How sage and true her advice. I remain on guard now for a whiff of didacticism in my writings, knowing that I will treasure the message she sent me. Poetry is a lifelong journey and apprenticeship, and I keep the photo taken of us all with Eavan that day above my desk to nudge me not to stint or slacken in my creative efforts. 

Eavan Boland (centre) with the participants of her masterclass, August 2018. L-R: Paul McCarrick,
Noelle Lynskey, Liam O'Neill, myself, Eavan, Fiona Smith, Alice Kinsella, Fiona Bolger & Breda Joyce

I don’t claim to be an expert on Eavan’s corpus of work by any means. However, I have had some occasions for close reading her poems when I explored them with undergraduates in Irish Studies seminars at NUI Galway (her poems about Irish migrant experience and the liminal spaces of the diaspora) and her poems about the Famine and the Irish landscape (such as "Quarantine", "That the Cartography of Science is Limited" and "The Famine Road") with American exchange students from Villanova University who were at NUI Galway for the semester. The latter poems, in particular, impressed my exchange students who were rendered speechless, with glassy eyes, when they googled ‘famine roads’ only to discover maps with meandering boreens like tributaries that tapered off into nothing, before ever reaching the ocean. They were dumbstruck at the calculated cruelty of Lord Trevelyan and his committee. Eavan bravely squared up to the great tragedy of the Famine through the lens of art, expressing the ineffable when few others were attempting to do so. In tackling the patriarchal hegemony of the Irish canon, her immersion in, and engagement with, Irish culture and the Irish tradition was profound. Lulled by the romance of the 18th century Aisling tradition and by the sovereignty myths of Banba, Eire and Fodhla, I confess that I hadn’t critically considered the import of the figuration of Ireland-as-woman for myself as a young Irish female writer until I read Eavan’s book, Object Lessons. "I could not a woman accept the nation formulated for me by Irish poetry and its traditions," she wrote, rejecting a "fusion of the national and the feminine which seemed to simplify both."

In terms of my own developing body of work, as a new mother living in the Galway suburbs, I was keenly aware that Eavan had celebrated the ordinary wonders of a woman’s life in the suburbs of Dublin, elevating the everyday granular details of her reality to art, like her great mentor, Patrick Kavanagh, before her had done for the small farms of rural Ireland. I felt truly free to write about my struggles with breast feeding, about adjusting to motherhood, about the vicissitudes of parenting a child with special education needs and also about attuning to the quiet joys of children, the wonder of “night feeds”, the miracles amid the challenges. 

In sum, Eavan Boland has bequeathed us many treasures; we are blessed to be able to enjoy her rich legacy. If you are not familiar with her poems, now is a great time to seek them out on sites such as Poetry Foundation or Poem Hunter.com for starters. Ar Dheis De go raibh a h-anam. 

Although it’s a sombre week to embark on a new adventure with technology, in the wake of Eavan's passing, I will be giving my first live youtube reading for the Holding Cell tomorrow evening (Wed, 29 April) at 7pm and the poet's generous legacy and spirit will be foremost on my mind. Please join me live from my kitchen at 7pm by clicking here.https://youtu.be/YJemsDRXwyU