Obituaries and tributes to Eavan Boland (1944-2020)
A collation of national and international coverage of the death of Eavan Boland (1944-2020). This archive contains formal obituaries, tributes, and essays placing Eavan Boland in Irish literary history, and it contextualises her struggle to bring both herself and the Irish woman poet into view.
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A Sense of Location and an Act of Leave-Taking: Remembering Eavan Boland
by Nan Cohen | for Poetry Northwest
"It is not exactly the same room every time. But when it surfaces in Eavan Boland’s poems and in her essays, it is recognizable enough: it is small and faces north. There is a table and a chair. A window, “small and inclined to stick on rainy afternoons.” A notebook and pen lying on an oilskin tablecloth. Sometimes it is day and the window looks over the garden; sometimes it is night and the window has “a few stars stuck to it.”
Online URL: https://www.poetrynw.org/a-sense-of-location-and-an-act-of-leave-taking/ Site accessed on 18/11/2020
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"Her Dance With History" on Eavan Boland's "The Historians" by Theo Dorgan for Dublin Review of Books.
"Steadily, poem by poem and book by book, Eavan worked her way into the heart of darkness, not in the Conradian sense of course, but into the centre of those marginal, penumbral zones outside the spotlight of what was “officially” deemed worthy of being remembered. Hers was a double journey ‑ the poet finding her way into the self-granted warrant of her craft, the citizen struggling for the vindication of women, for a more amplified and more truthful narrative of Ireland. Her method was her purpose: in confronting exclusion, in the historical sense, she simultaneously chose to examine her own path into permission, into the poem, ever-present to herself, always questioning her step-by-step progress into her own gathering experience of making."
"Her Dance With History" on Eavan Boland's "The Historians" by Theo Dorgan for Dublin Review of Books.
Online URL: https://drb.ie/essays/her-dance-with-history?fbclid=IwAR11NiTVSqAsC1j82xmTGXtmcFttb_BMOdy6Xu2JrQzxpeL_m3gk6FjpjMA Published 22/10/2020 Dublin Review Of Books, site accessed 23/10/2020
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Editorial PN Review 254, Volume 46 Number 6, July - August 2020 by Michael Schmidt
On 27 April I wrote to friends and colleagues. ‘You may have heard that Eavan Boland died today in Dublin of a stroke. She was seventy-five. It is an enormous loss for Irish poetry and Irish literature more widely. It is also a loss for PN Review and Carcanet. Eavan has contributed some of the best poems we have published to the magazine; she has suggested we consider many key poets down the years, new and old. Just last week we resolved the contract for her new, and now her last, book.’
Robyn Marsack, fresh from editing Fifty Fifty: Carcanet’s Jubilee in Letters, noted how, ‘when I was looking through the archives, I saw that correspondence about her own work was brief, but about others she wrote with feeling and generosity. Her advocacy and example have been so important to Irish literary culture and to ours at PNR and Carcanet.’
PNR Volume 46 Number 6, July - August 2020 by Michael Schmidt
Article URL: https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10778
The belated discovery of a role model: Nessa O’Mahony on Eavan Boland for Richard Howe.com (November 6th 2020)
"The lack of women role models in Irish literature has often been commented upon. When I studied literature in University College Dublin in the early 1980s, you would have been hard pressed to find examples of women writers on the curriculum. I do remember we studied Maria Edgeworth and Emily Dickinson, but when we entered the 20th century, the reading lists were determinedly masculine, set with great confidence and conviction by a predominantly male faculty. Indeed, the nearest we got to the feminine in some classes was when a lecturer described Leopold Bloom as a ‘womanly’ man."
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Where the Poet Stood: Eavan Boland and the Power of Perspective, Alexandra Teague for The Poetry Foundation (11th of September 2020)
Article URL: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2020/09/where-the-poet-stood-eavan-boland-and-the-power-of-perspective
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Editorial PN Review 254, Volume 46 Number 6, July - August 2020 by Michael Schmidt
PNR Volume 46 Number 6, July - August 2020 by Michael Schmidt
Article URL: https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10778
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Irish Times: Eavan Boland obituary. Outstanding Irish poet and academic
Boland Broke the mould of Irish poetry by making women's experiences central to her poems
Irish Times (Saturday, May 2nd, 2020)
Article URL: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/eavan-boland-obituary-outstanding-irish-poet-and-academic-1.4242681
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'Disruptive Irish Poet, is dead at 75
The New York Times (28/04/2020)
Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/eavan-boland-dead.html (Online)
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Eavan Boland, Pillar of Irish poetry (1944-2020)
She helped redefine the literary canon to include women's voices and those on the margins
by Margaret Spillane
The Nation (06/05/2020)
Article URL: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/eavan-boland-irish-poetry/
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Eavan Boland, leading Irish poet and champion of the female voice, dies aged 75
Poet, who returned last month from teaching at Stanford University, suffered a stroke.
Irish Times (27/04/2020)
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Eavan Boland’s legacy is in her poems, but it is also in Irish life
Irish Times (27/04/2020)
Article URL: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/eavan-boland-s-legacy-is-in-her-poems-but-it-is-also-in-irish-life-1.4239298
Eavan Boland, the Irish poet who did not heed authority in literature
Le Ortique (of the deformed canon)
Eavan Boland (1944-2020) è una delle più grandi poete d’Irlanda. Ricordarla significa ricordare quanto la storia della letteratura sia stata una storia di potere e soppressione a danno della scrittura delle donne. In Irlanda, è stata la prima a cominciare quel faticoso lavoro di ribellione e di smantellamento del canone letterario maschile; ed è grazie a lei se negli ultimi due decenni è stato possibile ricostruire e riesumare la letteratura irlandese delle donne, dall’800 ai giorni nostri. Erano i primi anni 60 quando pubblicò la sua prima raccolta di poesie, nella quale parla della sua esistenza come giovanissima moglie, madre e studentessa universitaria. Al Field Day al quale era stata invitata alla fine degli anni 80, attaccò scrittori e accademici che “dimenticarono” di includere le così numerose scrittrici irlandesi nella “Anthology of Irish writing”.
Article URL: Eavan Boland, la poeta irlandese che non ha ascoltato l’autorità in letteratura
Eavan Boland, Irish poet and Stanford professor, dies in her native Dublin
San Francisco Chronicle (04/05/2020)
Article URL: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Eavan-Boland-Irish-poet-and-Stanford-English-15243906.php
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Eavan Boland Obituary, The Poetry Book Society
The Poetry Book Society (28/04/2020)
Article Url: https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/blogs/news/eavan-boland
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Eavan Boland: poet whose focus on women's experiences redefined the scope of Irish literature
She drew on her country’s literary heritage while moving it in a new direction
Independent (19/05/2020)
Article URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/eavan-boland-death-poet-women-dublin-ireland-age-cause-a9500031.html
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Poet Eavan Boland dies age 75
RTE (27/05/2020)
Article URL: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0427/1135169-eavan-boland/
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Related links
"Testimony to a Flowering" by Catriona Crowe
The Dublin Review (2003)
Online URL: https://thedublinreview.com/article/testimony-to-a-flowering/
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Fired!
Preamble to the Pledge (2017)
Online URL: https://poethead.wordpress.com/fired-irish-women-poets-and-the-canon-preamble-to-the-pledge/