(Deirdre Falvey’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 4/20; One of Frances Kelly’s paintings, a portrait of her daughter Eavan Boland as a young girl. It features in the poster for Druid’s Boland: Journey of a Poet.)
Performance piece edited by Colm Tóibín will livestream one year after the poet’s death
It’s morning in California for Colm Tóibín, with sun streaming in the window; Garry Hynes is in Dublin as the dullish day ends. Technology enabling the conversation will also allow streaming of Druid Theatre’s latest project, Boland: Journey of a Poet, a new theatrical production about poet Eavan Boland, edited by Tóibín and directed by Hynes, towards the end of April, one year after Boland’s death.
Their locations are serendipitously appropriate, as Boland’s life and work had one foot in Stanford and one in suburban Dublin. The production explores the mind and imagination of one of Ireland’s great poets, melds her life and her work, as she did herself, “in the large, uncharted space between the lyrical and the political” as Tóibín describes.
Hynes and Druid were “looking at poetry, at a time where I think there’s a great need for the people to connect” and asked Tóibín to curate a series of poems over the 20th century. What started as one production – Coole Park Poetry Series of 10 actors reading 10 poems, from Austin Clark to Paula Meehan, broadcast during St Patrick’s Festival and more outings to come – grew into a second project.
Tóibín talks about “the two volumes of autobiographical essays, which are remarkable, which throw extraordinary light on the poetry, and on the life”.
“Slowly it emerged that, actually you could make a piece from that, using the poems and using the prose, and that they could throw light on each other, and you could make a narrative.” You could do that, said Colm. Could you do that, asked Garry. They both laugh now.
He came at it from a point of knowing Boland, having spent two periods at Stanford (in 2006 and 2008), where she led the writing programme, as well as return visits and many events and festivals, including Kilkenny, together. In Stanford, “she would call my office and say Colm, can I come up for a minute. We just talked poetry. She had an astonishing knowledge of what was happening in American poetry, and in Irish poetry too”.
She knew the poets personally, knew each poem: “I got an education from her. Hearing the voice I knew from the radio, in different contexts. I really found her tremendously good company as well. Very, very funny. She ran the programme and had an astonishing amount of power, which she used judiciously and kindly.”
