Citizen Poet: New and Selected Essays

A landmark volume of essays from “Ireland’s leading feminist poet” (New York Times Book Review) that celebrates a transformative vision of womanhood, nation, and poetry.

Eavan Boland was a trailblazing poet, critic, teacher, and essayist. Her writing shifted the conversation on how women redefined poetry in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—both in Ireland and abroad. This generous and wise volume contains essays selected from the two volumes Boland published during her lifetime, Object Lessons (1995) and A Journey with Two Maps (2011); major later writings addressing the changing nature of poetry, the poet, and Ireland; and an unpublished draft of “Daughter”—an extended lyric essay that Boland was working on at the time of her death.


With a compelling blend of memoir, analysis, and argument, Citizen Poet traces the arc of Boland’s pioneering view of nationhood through the lens of womanhood. Carving a path for the next generation, she broke open the male-dominated canon of Irish literature and mapped her poetic journey through the contours of life as a mother, daughter, and citizen.