Stepping Out Of the Shadows and Creating a History for Women

Until recently, women poets in Ireland have gotten little recognition, with poetry being dominated for many years by a longstanding male tradition. In a recent interview, Eavan Boland expressed this dilemma, saying, "A young woman in one of my workshops told me if I called myself a poet, people would think I didn't wash my windows" (Hannan 10). For many years it was hard to break through the invisible barrier, one that prevented women poets from …showed first 75 words of 2542 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2542 total…Studies 28 (1993): 100-115. Hannan, Dennis J. and Nancy Means Wright. "Q. and A. with Eavan Boland." Irish Literary Supplement 10.1 (1991): 10-11. Haberstroh, Patricia Boyle. Women Creating Women. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Keen, Paul. "The Doubled Edge: Identity and Alterity in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill." Mosaic 33.3 (2000): 19-34. Klauke, Amy. "Toward Her Own Image." Northwest Review 25.1 (1987): 73-80. Boland, Eavan. "The Woman Poet in a National Tradition." Studies Studies. August 1987 pgs 148-58