User:IS20010LK/sandbox

The Poetry Of Eva Gore-Booth When Eva was embarking on her writing career she was visited by W.B. Yeats who was very much taken with her work. In his own letters he states that he sent her a book to inspire her. Yeats was hoping that she would take up his cause of writing Irish tales to enchant and amuse. Instead Eva takes Irish folklore and put emphasis on the females in the story. Her widely discussed sexuality in later years is never declared but her poetry reflects it quite overtly. In her Triumph of Maeve she makes a minor scene between and Maeve and a wise woman almost erotic. (Donaghue, 1997) While in her legend of Deirdre she subverts the masculine nationalist identity of Ireland’s heroic tales. In her early work she uses the same poetic devises that her male counterparts do such as writing a love poem to the goddess of Nature. In these she does not take a male voice though. She is writing love verse from one woman to another. (Donaghue, 1997) Eva Gore-Booth was also one of a group of editors of the magazine Urania that published issues three times a year from 1916 – 1940. It was a feminist magazine that reprinted stories and poems from all over the world with editorial comment. A lot of prominent New Woman authors including Mona Caird were involved with the project. Each issue declared that sex was an accident and there were no intrinsic characteristics of the male or the female. Many New Woman issues were discussed such as gender equality, suffrage and marriage but Eva Gore-Booth went further than that to write poetry about women loving women. Even the title of the magazine Urania can refer to heavenly or Uranian another term for homosexual. Eva and Esther allowed their names to be used in connection with the periodical and Eva was considered to be an inspiration for Urania.

Bibliography Donaghue, E. (1997). 'How could I fear and hold thee by the hand' The Poetry of Eva Gore-Booth. In E. Walshe (Ed.), Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing. Cork: Cork Univeristy Press. Gupta, N. (2015, February). 'No man can face the past': Eva Gore Booth and Reincarnation as Feminist Historical Undertanding. Women's Studies, 44(2), 224-238. doi:10.1080/00497878.2015.988483 Oram, A. (2001, June). Feminism, Androgyny and Love between Women in Urania, 1916-1940. Media History, 7(1), 57-70.