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Eavan Boland: A Poet's Dublin
Published to celebrate the seventieth birthday of acclaimed Irish poet Eavan Boland, this beautifully designed book brings together many of Boland’s best known poems with her own striking photographs of her native city, Dublin. It also includes an introduction by Jody Allen Randolph, editor of Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland, and ‘Two Poets and a City’, a conversation between Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan in which the two poets reflect on their shared city and the role it has played in their lives and in their work.
96 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2014
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About the author
Paula Meehan
30 books15 followersMeehan studied at University College, Dublin and Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington.
She has been awarded The Martin Toonder Award (1995), The Butler Literary Award (1998), and the Denis Devlin Award (2002) for her work.
She has been awarded The Martin Toonder Award (1995), The Butler Literary Award (1998), and the Denis Devlin Award (2002) for her work.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 26, 2016
I did not know Eavan Boland before this, did not know Paula Meehan. I did know the exquisiteness of words, the occasional poet that tells my heart, spells my heart, rips rebuilds reweaves renews and changes the world for me. Gift-givers. Both of these women are such poets.
Instead I bought this book because they were writing cities.
I bought this book because I love Dublin, too. This post focuses on words and writers and cities, but I loved every word, every poem, the so-much-more, the different-for-all-of-us that lies in every line. Paula Meehan at the ends says 'The way a poem lets you hold so much in mind'. Which is why each poem will forever be so much more than what I write here. This is an apology for narrowing them down really, for making too obvious how much this blog is to mark and capture things I hope to weave together sometime in the futures. Not tell how things are. I'd have to write poetry for that.
The intro is from editor Jody Allen Randolph, and situates everything nicely -- there is so much to think about here:
She writes 'We also understood that poets both find and give identity to the city...As editors, we imagined this book as a topography of the city with the poet...' Thus poems arranged topographically not chronologically, in sections of river, city, suburb.
And this, a paradigm...I am never sure I like those, but this works better than most:
And so a skimming of poetry, pulling bits and pieces that speak to the city and hopefully not damaging the whole and damn but you should go read them all anyway.
From City of Shadows, a reclaiming of the ordinary for poetry, so much of her work is about that.
Except Boland makes this claim, scatters it in beauty and pain across the page.
Instead I bought this book because they were writing cities.
I bought this book because I love Dublin, too. This post focuses on words and writers and cities, but I loved every word, every poem, the so-much-more, the different-for-all-of-us that lies in every line. Paula Meehan at the ends says 'The way a poem lets you hold so much in mind'. Which is why each poem will forever be so much more than what I write here. This is an apology for narrowing them down really, for making too obvious how much this blog is to mark and capture things I hope to weave together sometime in the futures. Not tell how things are. I'd have to write poetry for that.
The intro is from editor Jody Allen Randolph, and situates everything nicely -- there is so much to think about here:
What gives cities their unique identities? As this book will suggest, a city gets its identity not just from its buildings, its industries, its history, its public events, and its notable citizens. It also finds its identity from being imagined. The years, decades, centuries in which a city shapes its inhabitants add up to a rich life and afterlife of meaning and memory. Those meanings and memories requires language and expression (9).
She writes 'We also understood that poets both find and give identity to the city...As editors, we imagined this book as a topography of the city with the poet...' Thus poems arranged topographically not chronologically, in sections of river, city, suburb.
And this, a paradigm...I am never sure I like those, but this works better than most:
But we wanted to do more that just suggest the ways in which a poet has imagined a city over a span of four or five decades. We wanted to sketch out a paradigm for how a city is imagined. To this end, we envisioned a series of suggestive dialogues between text and image, and between poet and poet. (11)
And so a skimming of poetry, pulling bits and pieces that speak to the city and hopefully not damaging the whole and damn but you should go read them all anyway.
From City of Shadows, a reclaiming of the ordinary for poetry, so much of her work is about that.
I absorbed the sense that poetry was safe here in this city at twilight, with its violet sky and constant drizzle, within this circle of libraries and pubs and talks about stanzas and cadences. Beyond it was the ordinariness which could only dissipate it; beyond it was a life for which no visionary claim could be made. (13)
Except Boland makes this claim, scatters it in beauty and pain across the page.
Displaying 1 of 1 review