Citizen Poet

New and Selected Essays

by Eavan Boland (Author, Stanford University), Heather Clark (Foreword by), Jody Allen Randolph (Editor)

A landmark volume of essays from “Ireland’s leading feminist poet” (New York Times Book Review) that celebrates a transformative vision of womanhood, nation, and poetry.

Eavan Boland was a trailblazing poet, critic, teacher, and essayist. Carving a path for the next generation, she broke open the male-dominated canon of Irish literature and mapped her poetic journey through the contours of life as a mother, daughter, and citizen.

Journey With Two Maps

A Journey With Two Maps
Becoming A Woman Poet
Eavan Boland
Carcanet Press
ISBN-10: 1 857545 41 9
ISBN-13: 978 1 857545 41 8
Published: April 2011

This is a book of being and becoming. It is about being a poet. It is also about the long process of becoming one.

A Journey with Two Maps begins with an anecdote: one afternoon, Eavan Boland saw one of her mother’s paintings for sale in a gallery, signed by her famous teacher. It is the starting point for an exploration of concepts of art and womanhood, of what it means to be a woman poet, finding her own voice within a tradition.

Boland’s discussion is both critical and deeply personal, an account of her development as a poet that traces her experiences as a woman, wife and mother in the light of influences such as Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks and Sylvia Plath. Boland considers the ways in which influences themselves may be changed as a tradition is remade. In the final part of the book, ‘Letter to a Young Woman Poet’, she addresses an unseen poet of the future who will redraw the maps once more, remaking the past and the present.