I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.
Eavan BolandI loved the illusion, the conviction, the desire - whatever you want to call it - that the words were agents rather than extensions of reality. That they made my life happen, rather than just recorded it happening.
Eavan BolandI'm really fortunate to be at Stanford. I go home every 10 weeks, but Stanford apart from being just a wonderful university is one of the places that are part of a great conversation.
Eavan BolandTo be an Irish poet after that 19th century in which there was such a struggle toward the light, I think still will always be in the hearts of the writers of my generation and the generations before and hopefully the generations after.
Eavan Boland