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Jenny Farrell<\/strong> remembers the life and work of the late Eavan Boland<\/em><\/p>\n Eavan Boland died on 27 April 2020. She ranks among Ireland\u2019s finest poets, and was one of the foremost female voices in Irish poetry. She was born in Dublin in 1944, her father a diplomat and her mother a painter. She published the first of many collections, 23 Poems, in 1962 while still a student at Trinity College in Dublin. Her early work tells of her experiences as a young mother, and her growing awareness of the role of women in Irish history. She commented in an interview:<\/p>\n I began to write in an Ireland where the word \u2018woman\u2019 and the word \u2018poet\u2019 seemed to be in some sort of magnetic opposition to each other. Ireland was a country with a compelling past, and the word \u2018woman\u2019 invoked all kinds of images of communality which were thought to be contrary to the life of anarchic individualism invoked by the word \u2018poet\u2019\u2026.I wanted to put the life I lived into the poem I wrote. And the life I lived was a woman\u2019s life. And I couldn\u2019t accept the possibility that the life of the woman would not, or could not, be named in the poetry of my own nation.<\/em><\/p>\n So Eavan Boland wrote about the many subjects that she experienced, as a woman and as a human being \u2013 and this included historical and political themes. She worked as a poet, editor and teacher. In later years, Boland was Professor of English and director of the creative writing programme at Stanford University. In 2017, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Book Awards.<\/p>\n A favourite poem of mine is one written in 1975, at the height of the Troubles:<\/p>\n The War Horse<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This dry night, nothing unusual Iron of his shoes as he stamps death I lift the window, watch the ambling feather In the tinker camp on the Enniskerry Road, Down. He is gone. No great harm is done. Of distant interest like a maimed limb, The stone of our house, expendable, a mere You might say, only a crocus, its bulbous head But we, we are safe, our unformed fear If a rose, a hedge, a crocus are uprooted He stumbles on like a rumour of war, huge Of curtains. He stumbles down our short street Then to breathe relief lean on the sill With atavism. That rose he smashed frays Of burned countryside, illicit braid: \u00a0\u201cThe War Horse\u201d is an ominous title, especially when we place ourselves in the time it was written. The Troubles brought daily deaths and terrible suffering. This poem challenges Southern Irish society\u2019s turning of a blind eye across the border. This is one of several poems\u00a0 where Boland tackles Southern indifference during these years.<\/p>\n \u00a0The title suggests power, masculinity and military force. War horses were usually stallions, bred and raised from foalhood to meet the needs of war. In contrast to the unease created by the title, the reader is told there is: \u201cnothing unusual\/ About the clip, clop\u201d, something that alerts the reader to there being something \u201cunusual\u201d. Clip, clop enacts the sound of the hooves on the street. Run-on lines throughout poem somehow seem to contradict its rhyming The \u201ccasual\/\/ Iron of his shoes as he stamps death\u201d, evokes violence, heightened in \u201ccoinage\u201d suggesting carnage. The level stress in \u201cstamps death\u201d suggests a horse or a soldier in battle. At the same time, the image is linked to the making of money and the violation of the earth. The rhyming of death and earth emphasises that all is not is well.<\/p>\n The speaker opens her sash window, exposing herself to the experience. The horse comes closer and more into focus. The description moves from the general distant appearance to more specific details: \u201cthe ambling feather\/ Of hock and fetlock\u201d \u2013 the long hair on the lower legs, \u2018hock\u2019 referring to the hind leg knee and \u2018fetlock\u2019 being the horse\u2019s ankle. The horse, the reader is told, is freed from being tied up in the \u201ctinker camp\u201d. The speaker focuses first on the animal\u2019s legs, then its freedom and his \u201cbreath\u201d and \u201csnuffling head\u201d.<\/p>\n The horse passes. And apprehension changes to relief. Yet, the proximity of this war horse has had an effect on the speaker\u2019s space, even in suburbia. Two caesuras slice the line. \u201cNo great harm is done\u201d alerts reader to harm! \u201cOnly a leaf of our laurel hedge is torn\u201d. The choice of the leaf, \u201claurel\u201d, connotes triumph, glory and peace but also funeral wreaths. The next line initially continues the idea of distance to the horse: \u201cOf distant interest\u201d but as the line progresses, this distance cannot be maintained. War in a remote place suddenly becomes vivid and fighting: \u201cmaimed limb\u201d comes as a huge shock. It contradicts \u201cdistant interest\u201d.<\/p>\n The reader is forced to reflect. This absence of emotional distance is underlined by the next image, the \u201crose\u201d that \u201cwill never climb\/ \u2026 our house\u201d: the rose signifies beauty and a life destroyed before its flower and \u201cour house\u201d is more than the immediate home of the speaker.<\/p>\n It comes to represent Ireland. The promise of life and beauty stamped out is given the specific 20th century Irish reference \u201cvolunteer\u201d. This one rose, the speaker states, is \u201cexpendable, a mere\/ Line of defence against him, a volunteer\/ You might say\u201d. However, the reader is unconvinced. The emotional weight of the imagery is on the side of this victim who is anything but \u201cexpendable\u201d.<\/p>\n This emotion is greatly intensified in the next image: \u201conly a crocus, its bulbous head\/ Blown from growth, one of the screamless dead.\u201d Again, the word \u201conly\u201d belies the speaker\u2019s empathy. The \u201cbulbous head\u201d evokes human heads, even skulls, and \u201cBlown from growth\u201d the violent killings of very young people, not even fully grown, by guns and explosives. The image of \u201cscreamless dead\u201d seems to suggest the opposite \u2013 terrible screams. It adds sound to an already horrifying image.<\/p>\n Developed from the apparently small damage done by the war horse to the speaker\u2019s hedging and garden, there has emerged a build-up of intense feeling for the youth and the dead of Ireland, indeed the world affected by war. Neither the rose nor the crocus will flower. O-sounds dominate, communicating deep sadness.<\/p>\n Following this intensity of feeling, the speaker addresses in similarly ironic tone her fellow dwellers in suburbia: \u201cBut we, we are safe, our unformed fear\/ Of fierce commitment gone\u201d. Neighbours hiding behind curtains, pretending not to know what is going on, afraid of the commitment and sacrifice made by others involved in conflict and war, and believing that turning away from suffering will somehow protect them from it. The speaker has opened the window and thereby herself to this experience and the grief it brings to her, while the others hide behind \u201ccurtains\u201d.<\/p>\n Now the voices of neighbours are brought in: \u201cwhy should we care\/\/ If a rose, a hedge, a crocus are uprooted\/ Like corpses, remote, crushed, mutilated?\u201d Boland exposes these people\u2019s indifference by recapturing the terrible violence. This highlights suburbia\u2019s attitude, where nothing matters unless it affects their own gardens. The speaker points out how the horse, by passing her garden does affect it; and this becomes an image for Ireland. The flowers are depicted as a very fragile line of defence against a powerful horse.<\/p>\n The speaker, too, is grateful that war has passed her house, but \u201catavism\u201d reminds her that war has damaged Ireland: \u201cfor a second only my blood is still\/\/ With atavism\u201d. The word \u201cstill\u201d has two meanings here: still with shock, and still in touch with the past (atavism). What was sensed before now becomes explicitly clear to her: the rose that was crushed is scattered across the hedge and reminds her of the violence past and present in Ireland.<\/p>\n The final images bring us back to the \u201crose\u201d that \u201cfrays\/ Ribboned across our hedge\u201d. The past (the Ribbonmen, an agrarian secret society who burned the countryside) and the present come together here surrounding \u201cour house\u201d. Ireland, and indeed the world cannot and must not ignore the devastation war brings. In the long run, nobody can pretend not to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jenny Farrell remembers the life and work of the late Eavan Boland Eavan Boland died on 27 April 2020. She ranks among Ireland\u2019s finest poets, and was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":13313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
About the clip, clop, casual<\/p>\n
Like a mint on the innocent coinage of earth.<\/p>\n
Of hock and fetlock, loosed from its daily tether<\/p>\n
Pass, his breath hissing, his snuffling head<\/p>\n
Only a leaf of our laurel hedge is torn \u2013<\/p>\n
Only a rose which now will never climb<\/p>\n
Line of defence against him, a volunteer<\/p>\n
Blown from growth, one of the screamless dead.<\/p>\n
Of fierce commitment gone; why should we care<\/p>\n
Like corpses, remote, crushed, mutilated?<\/p>\n
Threatening. Neighbours use the subterfuge<\/p>\n
Thankfully passing us. I pause, wait,<\/p>\n
And for a second only my blood is still<\/p>\n
Ribboned across our hedge, recalling days<\/p>\n
A cause ruined before, a world betrayed.<\/p>\n
couplets. They suggest that what is being related is not neat and tidy, but bursts out of this apparent control.<\/p>\n