Book Salon
A Woman Without A Country

A Woman Without a Country is a collection of poetry by leading Irish poet Eavan Boland. Boland inserts themes of mother, daughter, and generation throughout the collection. Readers confront issues of inheritance and deep loss. Ideas of nationhood and history are apparent throughout the individual poems, with a special emphasis on how these two ideas can define the life of an individual. Her poems offer a voice to those who have been without one during much of history.

In this book of poetry, Boland specifically focuses on the female experience. The poems show the female presence within the largely masculine nationalism of Ireland. Boland critiques the overwhelming presence of this nationalism by showing how it has pushed women to the edges of society, and in some cases has expelled them entirely from society.

The poems may signal a patriarchy that might never disappear, Boland presents women as a strong and integral part of Ireland. The reader is asked to wrestle with the hidden voice of women with each poem and to discover what their voices say about Irish nationalism in the past and today. 

Eavan Boland is widely considered to be one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature. Boland joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and is currently the Melvin and Bill Lane Professor for the director of the Creative Writing Program and the Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in Humanities and Director of the Creative Writing Program.