Carcanet Press - Eavan Boland: A Poet's Dublin

Description
Excerpt
Author
Awards
Reviews

A woman in the doorway of a house.
A river in the city of her birth.

There, in the hills above my house,
The river Liffey rises, is a source.
It rises in rush and ling heather and
Black peat and bracken and strengthens
To claim the city it narrated.

from ‘Anna Liffey’

Published to celebrate the seventieth birthday of acclaimed Irish poet Eavan Boland, this book brings together many of Boland’s best known poems with her own striking photographs of her native city, Dublin. Through juxtaposition of text and image, place and memory, the book creates a unique portrait of the city: ‘fragments’, Boland says, ‘can point at something accurately’.

A Poet’s Dublin also includes an introduction by Jody Allen Randolph and a conversation between Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan in which the two poets reflect on their shared city and the central role it has played in their lives and in their work.

Eavan Boland

Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College in Maine, and at the University of Iowa. She was Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. ... read more

Paula Meehan

Paula Meehan was born in Dublin where she still lives. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and at Eastern Washington University. She has published five previous collections of poetry and received many awards for her work including the Denis Devlin Award of the Irish Arts Council (An Chonthairle Ealafon) for ... read more

Jody Allen Randolph

Jody Allen Randolph was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at University College Dublin before earning her doctorate in British and American Literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She served as Assistant Dean of the British Studies at Oxford Programme at St. John's College, Oxford and has taught ... read more

Awards won by Eavan Boland Winner, 2020 Costa Poetry Award
(The Historians) Winner, 2017 Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award

Awards won by Paula Meehan Winner, 2017 SOA Cholmondeley Award

Praise for Eavan Boland '[Citizen Poet] is wide-ranging, thrillingly combative, and evidence of an ambitious commitment to broadening poetry's scope of possibility -- and, in doing so, remaking its past. ... If poetry, especially Irish poetry, has become less lonely than it was when Boland first encountered it, that's thanks in no small part to her lifelong work.'
Declan Ryan, The Telegraph
'Eavan Boland's essays are the work of an ever-generous, insightful and knowing cartographer. No one articulates the complexities, challenges and nuances of being an Irish female poet like she does in these original, arresting and trailblazing essays. Citizen Poet is a must-read for anyone interested in poetry, identity and the responsibilities of the artist.'
Victoria Kennefick 'Boland's essays remind us [...] of the change she helped bring about, which is nothing less than the redefinition and expansion of what Irish poetry â what any poetry â can be.'
Heather Clark

'...She has a dazzling gift for marrying the poem's narrative to its underlying considerations and themes, her carefully enacted restraint heightening the impact of the frequently stunning closing image.'

Maya C. Popa, Poetry Review

'The poems, all of them, have that familiar, spare, feel to them - the clarity of cold water, the measured cadence, the plain diction and the leaping insight so characteristic of her mature work - but there is grief here of a depth and of a kind that chills the heart... against the darkness that eddies and gathers in this, the last book we will have from her hand, there is indeed redemptive light'

Theo Dorgan, Dublin Review of Books

'This is a fitting tribute to a poet whose work has revised history as we know it and whose talent will be much missed.'

Poetry Book Society Winter Bulletin

'The first poem in Boland's book, The Fire Gilder, is one of the best Irish poems of the past half-century.'

Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times

'Truly consumable, enjoyable and emotive... all the things that great poetry should be.'

Jasmine Reads, YouTube

'[The Historians] zooms in with characteristic musicality and intelligence on what the stories that are often overlooked - those of women'

Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian Poetry Books of the Year 2020

'It is, as came to be expected from Boland, filled with stories of ordinary Irish women, sensitively rendered in her understated verse. In revisiting the otherwise erased experiences of her subjects, Boland asks us to reconfigure our own understanding of the past, though she acknowledges the difficulties of that, too'
The New Statesman
'There's a poignancy here that is hard to avoid... This modest collection is welcome and those who have not read Boland - few though they may be - will find here at least an introduction to her always-potent art. For others, it will serve as a coda to a poetic life well lived.'
Books Ireland Magazine
'It feels, reading it in the wake of her death, to be unsettlingly prophetic, a fitting close to the life's work of a great poet'
Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times
'... a rich, unsettling moral adventure in memory and responsibility.'
Theo Dorgan
Eavan Boland's A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet contains essays both personal and public written in a tone urgent and wise, with astute observations on her own trajectory as a poet and the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath and Paula Meehan, among others.
Colm Toibin, The Irish Times, Our Favourite Books of 2011
Praise for Paula Meehan 'These are poems fuelled by a fierce perception and generosity of spirit, joyfully and sorrowfully open to human frailty, passion, the natural world - what it means to be human. Even in the darkness of grief and loss Paula Meehan celebrates life with a visceral, flaying attention. It is as if anger, grace and wit have been hammered white-hot into the finest shining tool and ornament. '
Maura Dooley 'In Painting Rain Paula Meehan makes music that is a powerful confluence of themes: a field lost to a housing development, a north wind that whines through the dunes, an Irish mother whose daughters 'taught their mother barring orders and legal separation'. Each poem is powerful on its own, demanding and holding the white space of each page, but the cumulative effect is one of great wisdom and authority. Meehan had that special grace from the start, but now immensities have crystallized around each lyric she writes. Don't miss this work: Painting Rain is her finest book yet.'
Thomas McCarthy
'Paula Meehan is that rare and precious thing - a vocational poet of courage and integrity. Already much-loved and admired far beyond the shores of her native Ireland, Meehan advances her claim on our hearts and minds with Painting Rain. From present-day Dublin to Ancient Greece, the myths and flawed heroes of her poems give back to us our own lives, counted out in illuminated moments of joy, pain, love and memory.'
Carol Ann Duffy

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Eavan Boland: A Poet's Dublin Eavan Boland Edited by Paula Meehan and Jody Allen Randolph 10% off Categories: 21st Century, Art, Irish, Women Imprint: Lives and Letters Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (96 pages) (Pub. May 2014) 9781847774477 £14.99 £13.49 Description Excerpt Author Awards Reviews A woman in the doorway of a house. A river in the city of her birth. There, in the hills above my house, The river Liffey rises, is a source. It rises in rush and ling heather and Black peat and bracken and strengthens To claim the city it narrated. from ‘Anna Liffey’ Published to celebrate the seventieth birthday of acclaimed Irish poet Eavan Boland, this book brings together many of Boland’s best known poems with her own striking photographs of her native city, Dublin. Through juxtaposition of text and image, place and memory, the book creates a unique portrait of the city: ‘fragments’, Boland says, ‘can point at something accurately’. A Poet’s Dublin also includes an introduction by Jody Allen Randolph and a conversation between Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan in which the two poets reflect on their shared city and the central role it has played in their lives and in their work. Eavan Boland Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College in Maine, and at the University of Iowa. She was Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. ... read more Paula Meehan Paula Meehan was born in Dublin where she still lives. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and at Eastern Washington University. She has published five previous collections of poetry and received many awards for her work including the Denis Devlin Award of the Irish Arts Council (An Chonthairle Ealafon) for ... read more Jody Allen Randolph Jody Allen Randolph was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at University College Dublin before earning her doctorate in British and American Literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She served as Assistant Dean of the British Studies at Oxford Programme at St. John's College, Oxford and has taught ... read more Awards won by Eavan Boland Winner, 2020 Costa Poetry Award (The Historians) Winner, 2017 Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award Awards won by Paula Meehan Winner, 2017 SOA Cholmondeley Award Praise for Eavan Boland '[Citizen Poet] is wide-ranging, thrillingly combative, and evidence of an ambitious commitment to broadening poetry's scope of possibility -- and, in doing so, remaking its past. ... If poetry, especially Irish poetry, has become less lonely than it was when Boland first encountered it, that's thanks in no small part to her lifelong work.' Declan Ryan, The Telegraph 'Eavan Boland's essays are the work of an ever-generous, insightful and knowing cartographer. No one articulates the complexities, challenges and nuances of being an Irish female poet like she does in these original, arresting and trailblazing essays. Citizen Poet is a must-read for anyone interested in poetry, identity and the responsibilities of the artist.' Victoria Kennefick 'Boland's essays remind us [...] of the change she helped bring about, which is nothing less than the redefinition and expansion of what Irish poetry â what any poetry â can be.' Heather Clark '...She has a dazzling gift for marrying the poem's narrative to its underlying considerations and themes, her carefully enacted restraint heightening the impact of the frequently stunning closing image.' Maya C. Popa, Poetry Review 'The poems, all of them, have that familiar, spare, feel to them - the clarity of cold water, the measured cadence, the plain diction and the leaping insight so characteristic of her mature work - but there is grief here of a depth and of a kind that chills the heart... against the darkness that eddies and gathers in this, the last book we will have from her hand, there is indeed redemptive light' Theo Dorgan, Dublin Review of Books 'This is a fitting tribute to a poet whose work has revised history as we know it and whose talent will be much missed.' Poetry Book Society Winter Bulletin 'The first poem in Boland's book, The Fire Gilder, is one of the best Irish poems of the past half-century.' Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times 'Truly consumable, enjoyable and emotive... all the things that great poetry should be.' Jasmine Reads, YouTube '[The Historians] zooms in with characteristic musicality and intelligence on what the stories that are often overlooked - those of women' *Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian* Poetry Books of the Year 2020 'It is, as came to be expected from Boland, filled with stories of ordinary Irish women, sensitively rendered in her understated verse. In revisiting the otherwise erased experiences of her subjects, Boland asks us to reconfigure our own understanding of the past, though she acknowledges the difficulties of that, too' The New Statesman 'There's a poignancy here that is hard to avoid... This modest collection is welcome and those who have not read Boland - few though they may be - will find here at least an introduction to her always-potent art. For others, it will serve as a coda to a poetic life well lived.' Books Ireland Magazine** 'It feels, reading it in the wake of her death, to be unsettlingly prophetic, a fitting close to the life's work of a great poet' Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times '... a rich, unsettling moral adventure in memory and responsibility.' Theo Dorgan Eavan Boland's A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet contains essays both personal and public written in a tone urgent and wise, with astute observations on her own trajectory as a poet and the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath and Paula Meehan, among others. *Colm Toibin, The Irish Times, Our Favourite Books of 2011* Praise for Paula Meehan 'These are poems fuelled by a fierce perception and generosity of spirit, joyfully and sorrowfully open to human frailty, passion, the natural world - what it means to be human. Even in the darkness of grief and loss Paula Meehan celebrates life with a visceral, flaying attention. It is as if anger, grace and wit have been hammered white-hot into the finest shining tool and ornament. ' Maura Dooley 'In Painting Rain Paula Meehan makes music that is a powerful confluence of themes: a field lost to a housing development, a north wind that whines through the dunes, an Irish mother whose daughters 'taught their mother barring orders and legal separation'. Each poem is powerful on its own, demanding and holding the white space of each page, but the cumulative effect is one of great wisdom and authority. Meehan had that special grace from the start, but now immensities have crystallized around each lyric she writes. Don't miss this work: Painting Rain is her finest book yet.' Thomas McCarthy 'Paula Meehan is that rare and precious thing - a vocational poet of courage and integrity. Already much-loved and admired far beyond the shores of her native Ireland, Meehan advances her claim on our hearts and minds with Painting Rain. From present-day Dublin to Ancient Greece, the myths and flawed heroes of her poems give back to us our own lives, counted out in illuminated moments of joy, pain, love and memory.' Carol Ann Duffy You might also be interested in: Close to the Next Moment Edited by Jody Allen Randolph Pictures of War Mary Griffiths	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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Eavan Boland: A Poet's Dublin

Eavan Boland

Edited by Paula Meehan and Jody Allen Randolph