An Irish Childhood in England: 1951: Key Quotes

“An Irish Childhood in England: 1951”: Key Quotes

“edges of language”: Boland uses this phrase to hint at the cultural barriers she faced in a foreign land, representing feelings of uncertainty and alienation.
“I carried my customs”: The use of “customs” conveys the intrinsic cultural and traditional practices Boland carries with her, emphasising her sense of displacement.

“Living, we learned the streets, the sounds”: The use of alliteration creates a direct, immersive soundtrack from Boland’s memories of growing up, showing how childhood experiences shape our selves.
“you said collected history / although the label was not yet / written and the price / was still intact”: Boland’s evocation of her parents’ experiences, framed through the metaphor of the price tag or label, highlights how memory can serve as a living record, providing individual perspectives on historical moments.

“But in the classroom when asked / where I came from, / I said Cork and was / laughed at”: Boland directly quotes her childhood self here, laying bare the cultural dissonance she felt when her Irish place of origin was received with mockery.
“Cork that belonged to a geography / not history…. / was a long way away”: These lines emphasise the distance, not only physical but also emotional, between Boland and her homeland, further stressing her feelings of displacement.

“and they corrected me: / but you were born in Dublin”: The correction imposed on Boland in a foreign school underscores her challenges in affirming her Irish identity, complicates the meaning of ‘home’ for her, and imparts a sense of loss.
“I was forgetting my first landscape”: A key idea in much of Boland’s poetry is how identity is tied to place and the landscapes of our childhoods. This line conveys the fear of losing touch with her roots, and the longing for home.

“my parents… were now citizens of nowhere”: Boland reflects on the struggles of her immigrant parents, experiencing their cultural displacement vicariously and realising the impact of national identity on personal relationships.
“I brought their accents / to equations”: Boland shows a subtle form of rebellion by refusing to shed her parents’ accents - a symbolic representation of her native heritage - despite the confusion it brought to her school life.