During the early 1980s, when the poem was written, the feminist movement was beginning to take hold in Ireland. Irish feminists seeking equal rights and opportunities for women gleaned insights from the gains of the feminist revolution that took place in the United States during the 1970s, as well as the gains of civil rights movements in the United States, Ireland, and elsewhere. Writers such as Boland also drew inspiration from feminist poetic predecessors, such as the American poet Adrienne Rich. In prose and poetry, Irish women writers such as Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala ni Dhomhnaill, and Eilean ni Chuilleanain pioneered writing that explicitly addressed women's concerns and the fight for women's rights in the face of the then mostly male-dominated body of Irish literature. These writers also sought a place for women and women's concerns within the fight for Irish identity and nationhood, which had...