Eaven Boland world-renowned poet and director of creative writing at Stanford visited Pepperdine’s Raitt Recital Hall on Tuesday. For an hour she filled Raitt Recital Hall with her most striking poems and memorable stories of inspiration from Irish history captivating Pepperdine students in turn with her own story.
Boland has received much acclaim for her seven books including collections of poems such as “Domestic Violence” (2007) and her own prose memoir “Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time” (1996). She is the recipient of many awards including the Smartt Family Prize from “The Yale Review the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence from Centenary College, and the Bucknell Medal of Distinction.
They should do this more often said freshman Anna Tullis. The students benefit from it. And I love that we’re getting a taste of another culture.”
Pepperdine students responded positively with heavy attendance to the poetry reading. This may lead to more frequent opportunities for Pepperdine students to be in the presence of prolific writers in the future. Visits like these aid the creative writing department by giving creative writing and humanities majors as well as poets a chance to interact with professionals in the field.
“It was neat to sit and listen to the thoughts of someone really renowned Tullis added, and to have a preview into her inspiration and how she expressed it in her poems.”
Boland faced sexism throughout her career as a female in the entirely male-dominated field of writing in Ireland. Her courage to pursue creative writing despite those challenges opened up doors to write about family and topics such as “Domestic Violence.” This the title of her acclaimed 10th collection of poems carries the double meaning of both household conflict and national struggle.
Ultimately she seeks to preserve the stories of families and women in Ireland’s past in her writing.
Many creative writing students are taught poetry that is meant to be heard not read. The presence of Boland on campus gives students the ability to gain a richer experience to hear a poet present her work contextualizing each poem’s inception than to simply read her books.
Tullis relayed her love for the poem “Amber in which Boland eloquently describes the piece of amber given to her by her mother. Tullis was captivated by how Boland communicates how something part of the present” can be “holding pieces of the past.”
Tullis reflects that she was encouraged by Boland’s “Reading as Intimidation” where she records her hesitation as a new mother to write about her daughters because it was a subject poetry had not touched at a time when Irish female poets were rare. Tullis connected with Boland’s anxiety and questioning: “Will I be able to write what I want to write?” Once she faced this fear Boland found success. Her story inspires Pepperdine students to pursue their own passions despite lack of history or support.
Boland went on in her career to write many poems and books inspired by the past in Ireland as well as families including “Domestic Violence.” “Nothing is ever entirely right in the eyes of those who love each other she writes ominously, exposing the violence she and her husband witnessed in Irish history and in the relationship of the couple who lived above them during their newlywed years. She hauntingly depicts family issues and personal trials in her poetry, capturing the near death of her young daughter in which she remembers silently questioning, Will we ever live so intensely again?”
Though often ominous in her stories because of the effect of the Irish Potato Famine there is hope in her presence as a poet. In “Quarantine” she tells of a couple that left the workhouses set up during the famine and started walking to their cabin miles and miles away. The couple was found dead in the morning with the wife’s feet resting on her husband’s chest. “The last heat of his chest was his last gift to her Boland writes, expressing love that exists even in the grimmest points of history.
Pepperdine professors sponsor poets to present every year, exposing the campus to culture and the arts. But to have Eavan Boland this year was a unique privilege, an emerald at our university.