A Woman Without a Country

The poems in Eavan Boland's new collection consider questions of inheritance and identity, of what is handed down and what is lost. Boland's poems are acts of preservation: they are aware of the significance of objects, memories, words, in keeping alive what we would otherwise 'lose / without thinking'. At the same time, they are a holding to account, addressing the damage wrought by that other inheritance, the 'art of empire', the 'business ... of colony'. In the title sequence, Boland seeks to restore voice and place to those who, like her grandmother, lived and died 'outside history', skilled in ... silence'.