Eavan Boland Library Named at Trinity College Dublin
The building is the first on the city-centre campus to be named after a woman
Last month, Trinity College Dublin officially named the Eavan Boland Library, in honour of the celebrated Irish poet — making her the first woman to have a building on Trinity’s city-centre campus named after her.
To mark the naming, Trinity hosted an event at the library on 10th March, attended by family and friends of Eavan Boland, Trinity students and staff, and members of the literary community including Carcanet editor and MD Michael Schmidt.
The event coincided with the opening of two exhibitions at the library. The outdoor exhibition, ‘Eavan Boland: A Different Light’, explored Boland’s life and poetry, with another indoor display detailing the process of de-naming and renaming the library.
Formerly the George Berkeley Library, the University Board removed the name in 2023 after student campaigns to change it, as Irish philosopher Berkeley was also a slave owner. The board said that the name was now ‘inconsistent with the university’s core values of human dignity, freedom, inclusivity and equality.’
Speakers at the event included former president of Ireland and Trinity Chancellor Dr Mary McAleese, Trinity Provost Dr Linda Doyle, College Librarian & Archivist Helen Shenton, and poet Paula Meehan.
Paula Meehan said: ‘Eavan understood that her craft, her ancient and lyric art, could shift the concerns of those at the very edge of Irish society into the centre of the conversation about access, about permissions, about the right to be heard. She used the lens of her life as a woman and mother in a post-colonial patriarchal culture to radically change the idea of the poet in our time. … I hope the students using this Library will be inspired by her power, her imagination and her compassion.’
Helen Shenton said: ‘Under its new name, it provides an inclusive and inspirational space for current and future students, now bolstered by Eavan Boland’s scholarly and feminist reputation.’
The following evening there was also an event in Trinity’s Public Theatre, where poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Katie Donovan and Victoria Kennefick, chaired by Dr Rosie Lavan, were in discussion about Boland’s life, work, legacy, and the impact she had on their own writing.
Sarah Casey, Eavan’s daughter, said on behalf of herself and her sister Eavan: ‘[Our mother] always regarded herself as a teaching poet. She would have loved the idea that future generations of Trinity students will now be walking into a building carrying her name.’
Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College in Maine, and at the University of Iowa. She was Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's works include The Historians (2020), which won the Costa Poetry Award 2020 and was a 2020 Book of the Year in the TLS, Guardian, Sunday Independent and Irish Times, The Journey and other poems (1987), Night Feed (1982), The Lost Land (1998) and Code (2001). Her poems and essays appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She was a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She divided her time between California and Dublin where she lived with her husband, the novelist Kevin Casey. Eavan died in Dublin on 27th April 2020.
A writer who changed the way I write and think. This news makes me happy.