US-Ireland Alliance

CLICK HERE to listen to conversation with Eavan Boland

Irish poet, Eavan Boland, spoke with US-Ireland Alliance president, Trina Vargo, at Stanford University in September 2011.  Things discussed in the wide-ranging 40-minute interview include:

-- becoming a poet

-- truth telling in Ireland - Enda Kenny & the Vatican; Martin McGuinness' run for the presidency, Irish identity

-- the Irish economy - the public's expectation that writers be 'relevant'; how the Irish feel about their writers; the importance of language; can the arts 'save' Ireland; current hardship; global perception of Ireland

-- the Famine & the power of language

-- being a woman poet - Boland's relationships with her male contemporaries; feminism; the burqa

-- Boland's influence on young women poets; the accessibility of Irish writers vs. US writers; the perceived inaccessability of poetry