" A DREAM OF COLONY

I dreamed we came to an iron gate
and leaned hard against it.
It opened.
We heard it grinding slowly over gravel.

We started walking.
When we began to talk
I saw our words had the power to unmake history:

Gradually the elms beside us
shook themselves into leaves.
And laid out under us their undiseased shadows.

Every phrase of ours,
holding still for a moment in the stormy air,
raised an unburned house
at the end of an avenue of elder and willow."

(poetryfoundation.org/eavanboland/"Poetry",
Oktober, 1997/"A DREAM OF COLONY")

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Min tokning

En dröm om koloni

Jag drömde vi kom till en järngrind
och lutade oss tungt mot den.

Den öppnades.
Vi hörde den sakta mala över grus.

Vi började gå.
När vi började prata
såg jag våra ord förlösa historien:

Hur almarna vid vår sida
började skaka, blev ett med sina löv.
Under våra fötter strödde de skuggor av liv.

Varje fras som var vår,
för ett ögonblick stilla i stormen,
reste ett obrunnet hus
i änden av en aveny av fläder och vide.

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Eavan Aisling Boland, 1944 - 2020, är en av Irlands
mest kända och ansedda moderna poeter, och har
i sin poesi lyft fram den irländska kvinnans utsatthet
i vardag, myt och historia; ett perspektiv som ibland
vidgas till att spegla nationen som helhet.

"`Boland´s poetry is known for subverting traditional
constructions of womanhood, as well as offering fresh
perspectives on Irish history and Mythology.´"
(poertyfoundation.com/eavanboland)

"`Irland was a country with a compelling past, and the
word `woman´invoked all kinds of images of communality which were thought to be contrary to the life of anarhic individualism invoked by the word `poet´ ...I wanted to put the life I lived into the poem I wrote. And the life I lived was a woman´s life. And I couldn´t accept the possibility that the life of the woman would not, or could not, be namned in the poetry of my own nation´"
(Eavan Boland; poetryfoundation.com/eavanboland)

Två av de utmärkelser Eavan Boland tilldelats är
"Lannan Foundation Award i Poetry, och American Irland Fund Literary Award". Eavan Boland undervisade vid Trinity College, Dublin, University College, Dublin, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA och Stanford University (Professor), Kalifornien, USA.

Poesi (ett urval)

"23 Poems"(Gallagher; 1962)
"New Territory" (Allen Figgis; 1967)
"The War Horse", (Victor Gollancz; 1975)
"In her own Image" (Arlen House; 1980)
"Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990"; 1992
"Object Lessions: The Life of the Woman and the Poets
in our Time; 1998
"An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems, 1957-1987"; 1997
"The Lost Land: Poems"; 1999
"Domestic Violence: Poems; 2008
"New collected Poems"; 2009
"A journey with two Maps; Becoming a Woman Poet"; 2012
"The Historians: Poems"; 2020