EAVAN BOLAND Biography - Famous Poets and dancers

 
 

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EAVAN BOLAND

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin in 1944 and lived in Ireland until she was six     
years old. At the age of six, she and her family moved to London, where Boland     
had her first experiences of anti-Irish sentiment. Dealing with this hostility     
strengthened Boland's identification with her Irish heritage. She speaks of this   
time in her poem "An Irish Childhood in England: 1951."                           
                                                                                   
I came to in nineteen fifty-one:                                                   
                                                                                   
barely-gelled, a freckled six-year-old,                                           
                                                                                   
overdressed and sick on the plane,                                                 
                                                                                   
when all of England to an Irish child                                             
                                                                                   
was nothing more than what you'd lost and how:                                     
                                                                                   
was the teacher in the London convent who,                                         
                                                                                   
when I pronounced "I amn't" in the classroom                                       
                                                                                   
turned and said-- "you're not in Ireland now." (Outside History 107)               
She later returned to Dublin to attend school and self-published a pamphlet of     
poetry (23 Poems) after her graduation. Boland received her BA from Trinity       
College, Dublin in 1966. Since that time she has held numerous teaching           
positions and published poetry, books and journal articles. Boland married in     
1969 and has two children. Her experiences as a wife and mother have influenced   
her to write about the beauty and importance of the common, as she describes in   
a quote taken from Contemporary Authors. I was there with two small children in   
a house and I could see what was potent and splendid and powerful happening       
every day in front of me and I wanted to express that. (Contemporary Authors       
1997)