Fable has it that Guy de Maupassant lunched every day in the Eiffel Tower restaurant as it was the only place in Paris he did not have to see it. Irish writers have a similar fixation with place. Amongst others, Edna OâBrien and James Joyce breathed easier in less prescriptive climes than Catholic Ireland, but instead of extinguishing their view of it they sharpened it. Eavan Bolandâs work was less concerned with visibility and more with what fell outside of it. Given that the margins of a national literature are often narrow, this was a complicated concern for a female writer in the 1960s, seeking to place the reality of her life within Irish literature. Not only was Irish poetry perceived as a male enterprise due to the publishing landscape, but the literary culture Boland entered when she was published in The Irish Times aged 20 was a male-dominated pub scene.