“Between the Word Place and the Word Mine”: Repossession of Poetic Spaces in Eavan Boland’s Poems

“Between the Word Place and the Word Mine”: Repossession of Poetic Spaces in Eavan Boland’s Poems

The Irish woman poet, Eavan Boland (1944~ ), creates a new poetic space to include herstories which have been silenced by the male-centered Irish literary tradition. Estranged from the Irish patriarchal nationalism and gender politics, she tries to establish the poetic space that can embrace her marginalized status as an “exile.” Examining her poems from The Journey (1987) to Domestic Violence (2007), this thesis traces the shifts in Boland’s sense of place. The poet’s changing views on the relationship between her and her place enable her to re-vision the traditional role of the poet. The first part of the paper focuses on Boland’s representation of the domestic home space in the poem “Nocturne” from The Journey (1987), illustrating her efforts to reconstruct her poetic space with her imagination formed through her maternal and domestic experiences. The second part examines poems from Outside History (1990) to Domestic Violence (2007), unfolding how Boland repossesses poetic spaces via common experiences of women’s marginalization. By re-visiting and reconstructing the silenced past of women, Boland opens her poetic space where history and herstory co-exist.