Eavan Boland is considered by many to be Ireland's greatest modern poet and its preeminent female poet.
In my opinion she is the most relatable poet I have ever read. I first discovered her when I read A Woman's World. I like her work because she does not write about flowery stuff like love and nature. When I read her poems I think about the women in my life and what she is saying about them. She has strong feminist tones in her poetry but she brings up new issues and insights. I like that she writes about everyday activities because that is my life and she makes these simple, daily interactions valuable through her poetry.
Eavan Boland was born the youngest of five in Dublin in 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an artist. In 1951, her family moved to England because of her father's job. This was a difficult time to be Irish in England, as England and Ireland had a long-term dispute over the six counties that made up Northern Ireland. An Irish civil rights movement grew in the 1960s and turned violent in the 70s. The English saw the Irish as terrorists, and the Irish saw the English as bloody oppressors. Eavan Boland's writing reflects growing up in this time as she depicts the violence that tore apart her beloved country. She also draws on her childhood experiences in England to depict the issues of alienation and exile in many of her poems.
In 1969, Boland married Kevin Casey and they had two daughters, one in 1976 and one in 1978. These events affected her poetry and she has written multiple poems to and about her daughters. She uses her poetry to analyze the role of women in society as mothers and wives. Her poems describe the beauty but also the isolation of women.
Eavan Boland writes about domestic life for women and has said that she believes it is harder to capture a simple, everyday moment than a dramatic event. Boland is both criticized and praised for her choice of themes: some believe that Boland writes about bland and worthless topics and that this is what results from a female poet while other readers find her somewhat controversial subject insightful. She has writes about topics such as child abuse, violence against women, self-esteem, and eating disorders. She herself has said "I think feminism has real power and authority as an ethic, but none at all as an aesthetic." What she meant was that her feminism influences her poetry but it is not her goal to promote feminism or write about it.
In recent years Boland has worked as an English professor at Irish and American colleges. She is currently the director of Stanford University’s creative writing program and has been a tenured English professor at Stanford since 1996. Boland has published ten volumes of poetry, her most recent being New Collected Poems in 2008. The most distinguished awards she has received are the Lannan Foundation Award in poetry and the American Ireland Fund Literary Award. Her influences are said to be W.B. Yeats and Adrienne Rich.
Brief Bio & Overview: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/153
Her current employer’s bio: http://english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=27
Common criticism: http://www.enotes.com/eavan-boland-criticism/boland-eavan-79006
An interview: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15939
A Q&A session with readers: http://www.smartishpace.com/pqa/eavan_boland/
No comments:
Post a Comment