Boland, Eavan Aisling

(1944- )

   Born in Dublin, she was educated wherever her father's diplomatic career took him, including London and New York. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1966, where she read Latin and English, she became a freelance lecturer and a journalist and critic for The Irish Times. She has taught at several universities and is writer in residence at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin. She is also professor of English at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Her experiences as a wife and mother have influenced her to write about the beauty and importance of all things common-of flowers, and fabrics, of colors and cosmetics. Some of her publications: 23 Poems, 1962. New Territory 1967. The War Horse, 1975. In Her Own Image, 1980. Night Feed, 1982. Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990, 1990. In a Time of Violence, 1994. An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems, 1967-1987, 1996. After Every War, 2004 (translations from Germanspeaking women poets). Some of her poems: "An Irish Childhood in England: 1951," "Child of Our Time," "Nights of Childhood," "The Achill Woman," "The Emigrant Irish," "The Pomegranate."

   Sources: A Look in the Mirror and Other Poems. Padraic Fallon & Eavan Boland, ed. Carcanet Press. 2003. Americans' Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Antholog y. Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz, ed. W.W. Norton, 2000. Antholog y of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Keith Tuma, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Bitter Harvest: An Antholog y of Contemporary Irish Verse. John Montague, ed. Scribner's, 1989. Contemporary Irish Poetry: An Antholog y. Anthony Bradley, ed. University of California Press (New and rev. ed., 1988). Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Modern Irish Poetry. Patrick Crotty, ed. The Blackstaff Press, 1995. The Body Electric: America's Best Poetry from the American Poetry Review. Stephen Berg, David Bonanno, and Arthur Vogelsang, ed. W.W. Norton, 2000. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, ed. W.W. Norton, 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).