Trinity celebrates renaming of Library after poet Eavan Boland

In the week after International Women’s Day, Trinity College Dublin is marking the renaming of its main library after the poet Eavan Boland with a special event on campus.  There is an outdoor display on Eavan Boland and her poetry (as pictured above, with Librarian Helen Shenton and Sarah Casey, one of Eavan Boland's daughters) and an indoor multimedia display on the denaming and renaming of the library.   

The naming of the Eavan Boland Library (formerly the Berkeley Library) was celebrated on Monday evening by Trinity’s Chancellor Dr Mary McAleese and guest of honour, poet Paula Meehan, with an audience of Trinity staff and students, Eavan Boland’s family and friends, the Irish poetry community, and representatives from cultural and public life in Ireland.  

Eavan Boland, who died in 2020, was one of the foremost women in Irish literature, publishing many collections of poetry, a memoir Object Lessons (1995), as well as teaching and lecturing in Ireland and in the US. Her poetry has been widely acclaimed for foregrounding women’s experience in Irish poetry, moving women from the position of object to that of subject.  

The Eavan Boland Library is the first building on the University’s city-centre campus to be named after a woman. The University Board decided her name should be given to the Trinity Library last October after a period of research, analysis and public consultation overseen by the Trinity Legacies Review Working Group.    

An outdoor exhibition, 'Eavan Boland: A Different Light’ has opened on the Library podium, accompanied by an after-dark projection onto the Library façade. 

An ‘In Conversation’ event about Eavan Boland with poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Katie Donovan and Victoria Kennefick will also take place on Tuesday, 11th March 4.30pm-5.30pm in the Public Theatre (Exam Hall) in Trinity. The event will be chaired by Dr Rosie Lavan, and is hosted by the Library of Trinity College in collaboration with the School of English. (Please register through Eventbrite).    

Librarian and College Archivist Helen Shenton said: "In her poetry, Eavan Boland invites us to ‘make of the past what you can’. Looking at the past creates new perspectives; as a 21st century library, the name change to this unique library building prioritises the current generation of students’ experience of a welcoming and supportive library space. 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.”  

Poet 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.”  

Sarah Casey, Eavan’s daughter, said on behalf of herself and her sister Eavan: “Our mother was not inclined to seek recognition for herself but we know Trinity was a very special place for her, where she spent formative years in the 60s. She 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.”  

Trinity’s Provost Dr Linda Doyle said: “Since we announced the Library’s new name last year, I have been struck by the positive response from so many students and staff. Eavan Boland was not only a wonderful poet, renowned at home and overseas, she also studied here in Trinity, she taught here and was a recipient of a Trinity honorary degree.   

She will be a worthy role model for our students for many years to come.”  

Media Contact:

Catherine O’Mahony | Media Relations | catherine.omahony@tcd.ie