Carcanet Press - Three Irish Poets

Description
Authors
Awards
Reviews

Poetry Book Society Special Commendation

In this radical anthology the work of three of Ireland's most important and best-loved contemporary poets is featured. Each has, in a different way, cleared new creative space to speak and to sing.

The anthology makes an essential selection of some forty pages from the work of the poets. Each contributes a short personal statement, and there is a bibliography. Eavan Boland introduces the book with a major new essay.

EAVAN BOLAND was born in Dublin in 1944. She studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She is Melvin and Bill Lane Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. Her Carcanet books include Selected Poems, Collected Poems, The Lost Land, Code, and her prose book Object Lessons.

PAULA MEEHAN was born in 1955 in Dublin. She studied at Trinity College and became a Writer Fellow of the English Department, and has taught in the United States. She has written plays and held a creative writing fellowship at University College, Dublin. She has worked with inner city communities and conducted workshops in prisons. Carcanet published Dharmakaya, her most recent book of poems, in 2000. The Man Who Was Marked by Winter (1991) and Pillow Talk (1994) were published by Gallery Press.

MARY O'MALLEY, born in Galway in 1954, has travelled widely but returned to Ireland to become part of the Cuirt Festival committee. She is a member of the Poetry Council for Ireland. Her previous collections include Where the Rocks Float (1993), The Knife in the Wave (1997) and Asylum Road (2001) published by Salmon Poetry, and The Boning Hall (2002) published by Carcanet.

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

Mary O'Malley

Mary O'Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at Universidade Nova. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the ... 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

Awards won by Mary O'Malley Joint winner, 2018 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award
(Playing the Octopus)

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
Praise for Mary O'Malley 'The Shark Nursery brings a fine lyric sensibility to subjects as diverse as Greek mythology, marine biology and the time/space continuum. ... Other poems push all the way into a lyrical surrealism rare in Irish poetry, harnessing metaphor's capacity to rough up our sense of the world as fixed and predictable.'
Vona Groarke, The Irish Times
'Gaudent Angeli is a significant addition to the opus of a poet serious about her art... O'Malley excels when she combines the high with the low, such as in 'Little Dazzler' which manages to include Odysseus, a sorceress, condoms, smartphones, and a "supermodel in a green tube dress".'
Kevin Higgins, Galway Advertiser
'very fine and hugely varied collection of poetry'
Colette Sheridan, Irish Examiner
'O'Malley is a true artist in sketching the beautiful, small details without which the essence of place, and the identity dependent on it, can be all too easily erased.'
Eavan Boland
'This new collection by one of Ireland's most respected and radical poets is as exhilarating a read as the title promises. Sampling through levels of irony from the neolithic to the neon lights of the lonely cities, from east to west, and indeed the hackneyed wesht (with a characteristically wicked eye), O'Malley offers us lyrics of the salvific quotidian woven together with the surreal elements of surviving our island paradoxes. Insouciant as the pirate queen Grace O'Malley who downfaced Elizabeth the First, Mary O'Malley steps into a zone of power and mastery with these new poems.'
Paula Meehan
'Mary O'Malley's seascapes [...] are suffused with such beauty and sonorous mystery and rhythmic care that they lift us above ourselves and the time we inhabit.'

Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, 8th December 2012

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Three Irish Poets Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan and Mary O'Malley Edited by Eavan Boland 10% off Categories: 20th Century, Irish, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (144 pages) (Pub. Aug 2003) 9781857546835 £12.95 £11.65 Description Authors Awards Reviews Poetry Book Society Special Commendation In this radical anthology the work of three of Ireland's most important and best-loved contemporary poets is featured. Each has, in a different way, cleared new creative space to speak and to sing. The anthology makes an essential selection of some forty pages from the work of the poets. Each contributes a short personal statement, and there is a bibliography. Eavan Boland introduces the book with a major new essay. EAVAN BOLAND was born in Dublin in 1944. She studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She is Melvin and Bill Lane Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. Her Carcanet books include Selected Poems, Collected Poems, The Lost Land, Code, and her prose book Object Lessons. PAULA MEEHAN was born in 1955 in Dublin. She studied at Trinity College and became a Writer Fellow of the English Department, and has taught in the United States. She has written plays and held a creative writing fellowship at University College, Dublin. She has worked with inner city communities and conducted workshops in prisons. Carcanet published Dharmakaya, her most recent book of poems, in 2000. The Man Who Was Marked by Winter (1991) and Pillow Talk (1994) were published by Gallery Press. MARY O'MALLEY, born in Galway in 1954, has travelled widely but returned to Ireland to become part of the Cuirt Festival committee. She is a member of the Poetry Council for Ireland. Her previous collections include Where the Rocks Float (1993), The Knife in the Wave (1997) and Asylum Road (2001) published by Salmon Poetry, and The Boning Hall (2002) published by Carcanet. 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 Mary O'Malley Mary O'Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at Universidade Nova. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the ... 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 Awards won by Mary O'Malley Joint winner, 2018 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award (Playing the Octopus) 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 Praise for Mary O'Malley 'The Shark Nursery brings a fine lyric sensibility to subjects as diverse as Greek mythology, marine biology and the time/space continuum. ... Other poems push all the way into a lyrical surrealism rare in Irish poetry, harnessing metaphor's capacity to rough up our sense of the world as fixed and predictable.' Vona Groarke, The Irish Times 'Gaudent Angeli is a significant addition to the opus of a poet serious about her art... O'Malley excels when she combines the high with the low, such as in 'Little Dazzler' which manages to include Odysseus, a sorceress, condoms, smartphones, and a "supermodel in a green tube dress".' Kevin Higgins, Galway Advertiser 'very fine and hugely varied collection of poetry' Colette Sheridan, Irish Examiner 'O'Malley is a true artist in sketching the beautiful, small details without which the essence of place, and the identity dependent on it, can be all too easily erased.' Eavan Boland 'This new collection by one of Ireland's most respected and radical poets is as exhilarating a read as the title promises. Sampling through levels of irony from the neolithic to the neon lights of the lonely cities, from east to west, and indeed the hackneyed wesht (with a characteristically wicked eye), O'Malley offers us lyrics of the salvific quotidian woven together with the surreal elements of surviving our island paradoxes. Insouciant as the pirate queen Grace O'Malley who downfaced Elizabeth the First, Mary O'Malley steps into a zone of power and mastery with these new poems.' Paula Meehan 'Mary O'Malley's seascapes [...] are suffused with such beauty and sonorous mystery and rhythmic care that they lift us above ourselves and the time we inhabit.' *Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, 8th December 2012*	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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Three Irish Poets

Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan and Mary O'Malley

Edited by Eavan Boland