Boland's father, Frederick Boland, was a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, was a noted post-expressionist painter. She was born in Dublin in 1944. At the age of six, Boland's father was appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom; the family followed him to London, where Boland had her first experiences of anti-Irish sentiment. Her dealing with this hostility strengthened Boland's identification with her Irish heritage. She spoke of this time in her poem "An Irish Childhood in England: 1951."
At 14, she returned to Dublin to attend Holy Child School in Killiney. She published a pamphlet of poetry (23 Poems) in her first year at Trinity, in 1962. Boland earned a BA with First Class Honors in English Literature and Language from Trinity College, Dublin in 1966. Since then she has held numerous teaching positions and published poetry, prose criticism and essays. Boland married the novelist Kevin Casey in 1969 and has two daughters. Her experiences as a wife and mother have influenced her to write about the centrality of the ordinary, as well as providing a frame for more political and historical themes.
She has taught at Trinity College, Dublin, University College, Dublin, and Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She was also writer in residence at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the National Maternity Hospital. In the late 70s and 80s, she taught at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin. Since 1996 she has been a tenured Professor of English at Stanford University where she is currently Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill Lane Professor for Director of the Creative Writing program. She divides her time between Palo Alto and her home in Dublin.
On June 10, 2010, Boland's poetry did not appear as one of four prescribed poets (from a set curriculum of 8) on the Irish Leaving Certificate. Boland was considered a hot tip given that the only other female on the course, Adrienne Rich, had appeared only two years previously. However, with thousands of students prepared only to answer on Boland, her work was not on the paper. There was uproar in Ireland over this.
Her books of poetry include Domestic Violence (W. W. Norton & Co., 2007), Against Love Poetry (W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), The Lost Land (1998), An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987 (1996), In a Time of Violence (1994), Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990 (1990), The Journey and Other Poems (1986), Night Feed (1982), and In Her Own Image (1980). In addition to her books of poetry, Boland is also the author of Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (W. W. Norton, 1995), a volume of prose, and co-editor of The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (W. W. Norton & Co., 2000).
In 1976, Boland won a Jacob's Award for her involvement in The Arts Programme broadcast on RTÉ Radio.
Her other awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award.She also received the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence Centenary College 2002, the Bucknell Medal of Distinction 2000 Bucknell University, the Smartt Family prize from the Yale Review and the John Frederick Nims Award from Poetry Magazine 2002.Her volume "Domestic Violence" (2007) was shortlisted for the Forward prize in the UK.Her poem"Violence Against Women" from the same volume was awarded the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry for the best poem published in 2007 in Shenandoah magazine.
In 1997 she received an honorary degree from University College Dublin. She also received honorary degrees from Strathclyde University and Colby College in the US in 1997, and the College of the Holy Cross in 1999. She received one from Bowdoin College in 2004. In 2004 she also received an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin.
Eavan Boland's first book of poetry was New Territory published in 1967 with Dublin publisher Allen Figgis. This was followed by The War Horse (1975), In Her Own Image (1980) and Night Feed (1982), which established her reputation as a writer on the ordinary lives of women and on the difficulties faced by women poets in a male-dominated literary world.
Her collection In a Time of Violence (1994) received a Lannan Award and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Several of her volumes of poetry have been Poetry Book Society Choices in the UK, where she is primarily published by Carcanet Press. Carcanet Press - Eavan Boland. In the United States her publisher is W. W. Norton. Her volume of poems Against Love Poetry (W. W. Norton 2001) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Former Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, quoted from her poem "The Emigrant Irish" in his address to the joint houses of the US Congress in May 2008.
She is co-editor of The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (with Mark Strand; W. W. Norton & Co., 2000). She also published a volume of translations in 2004 called After Every War (Princeton University Press).With Edward Hirsch, she co-edited "The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology of the Sonnet" (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008).
