This is Episode 103 of Poems for the Speed of Life.

Today's poem is "The Singers" by Eavan Boland.

Eavan Boland was an Irish poet who died in 2020 at the age of 75. She taught at Stanford University professor for the last 25 years of her life. "The Singers" came to some prominence when Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland, quoted the last line in her historic inaugural address in December 1990.

The poem takes as its starting point the female singers on Ireland’s "unforgiving" west coast.

Widening the lens, though, could Ireland itself be revealed as "the West" and the singers all women who found themselves silenced and could now, together, find their voice?

Widening further, the poem stands as a form of prayer, perhaps, for anyone—sex, faith, race or minority—who might need a hand up to a greater height. (This is the second time an Eavan Boland poem has featured on this show. You can search for Episode 68 for "The Lost Land" which also looks to Ireland as a sort of symbol.)

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