"The Influence of Absences": Eavan Boland and the Silenced History of Irish Women's Poetry

Abstract

address given at Dublin Castle on December 3, 1990,Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, promised to use herterm of office to write those women back into history who had felt them­selves to be outside it. Quoting the final lines from Eavan Boland'spoemThe Singers, a text which would later be dedicated to her, Robinson con­jured up an enticing vista of a transformed Irish society in which womenwould have the possibility of finding a voice where they found a vision.