"Quarantine" is a

political poem Political poetry brings together politics and poetry. According to "The Politics of Poetry"by David Orr, poetry and politics connect through expression and feeling, although both of them are matters of persuasion. Political poetry connects to peop ...

written by Irish poet Eavan Boland about the

Irish famine The Great Famine ( ga, an Gorta Mór ), also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a h ...

of the mid 19th century, published in her 2001 poetry collection ''Code''. It was one of 10 poems shortlisted for

RTÉ (RTÉ) (; Irish language, Irish for "Radio & Television of Ireland") is the Public broadcaster, national broadcaster of Republic of Ireland, Ireland headquartered in Dublin. It both produces and broadcasts programmes on RTÉ Television, telev ...

's selection of Ireland's favourite poems of the last 100 years in 2015. The poem is about a couple who leave the workhouse during the worst year of the Irish famine while she was sick with famine fever (typhus). The next day they are found to have frozen to death, with her feet held against his chest as he tried to keep her warm. The 20-line poem is made up of five

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s, and is without ornament.

References

Irish poems Poems about death Historical poems 2001 poems {{Poem-stub