Irish Writers on Writing

The Writer's World

by Eavan Boland, Edward Hirsch (Editor)

What does it mean to be a writer in the context of a country’s centuries of uncertainty and upheaval? How does an Irish writer define Irish writing? The writers here, who range from early legends like Yeats to modern masters like Roddy Doyle, address these questions through their the land, the Church, the past, and changing politics and literary styles. The book begins with William Yeats and Augusta Gregory’s dazzling meditations on the founding of the National Theatre as a venue for a new Irish imagination. Lady Gregory herself is the subject of pithy essays by Kate O’Brien and Colm Toibin. Poets discuss their peers — Corkery on the Gaelic poets; Frank O’Connor on Corkery; O’Casey on Yeats; Roddy Doyle on Synge. Emma Donoghue illuminates the life of a lesbian Irish writer, while John Banville excoriates Bloomsday and “the pervasiveness and bathos of the Joyce myth." Irish Writers on Writing raises a toast to one of the world’s most vital literary traditions.

Genres: Writing, Ireland

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2007

About the author

Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, the University of Iowa, and Stanford University. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's works include The Journey and other poems (1987), Night Feed (1994), The Lost Land (1998) and Code (2001). Her poems and essays appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She was a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She was married to the novelist Kevin Casey.