The poems in Eavan Boland's new collection consider questions of inheritance and identity, of what is handed down and what is lost. Boland's poems are acts of preservation: they are aware of the significance of objects, memories, words, in keeping alive what we would otherwise lose / without thinking'. At the same time, they are a holding to account, addressing the damage wrought by that other inheritance, the art of empire', the business … of colony'. In the title sequence, Boland seeks to restore voice and place to those who, like her grandmother, lived and died outside history', skilled in … silence'.
