Collected Poems | Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Collected Poems gathers nine collections of poetry, from Acts and Monuments (1972) to The Mother House (2020), as well as new poems and translations. Her poetry is scrupulously controlled but also continuously startling, using the language of history, religion, landscape, and myth. Travelers, pilgrims, and women—especially the veiled subject of the nun—remind us of our deepest inner sanctum with its litany of spiritual truths, human fears, and needs. These images also catalogue the importance of the ordinary and the domestic as metaphors for human experiences and emotions. Ní Chuilleanáin allows those who have been silenced by history to surface in art as surreal but living presences. It is now unquestionably apparent that she is one the major poets in contemporary Ireland.

Genres: Poetry, Ireland

424 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2021

About the author

Born in Cork, Irish poet, translator, and editor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of a writer and a professor who fought in the Irish War of Independence. She earned a BA and MA at University College Cork and also studied at Oxford University.

Ní Chuilleanáin uses transformative, sweeping metaphor to invert the structures of interior, natural, and spiritual realms. In a 2009 interview for Wake Forest University Press, Ní Chuilleanáin states, “The question I ask myself constantly is ‘is this real? Do I really believe this, do I really feel this?’ But that is a question I cannot answer except by trying again in a poem.” Awarding Ní Chuilleanáin the 2010 Griffin Prize, the judges noted, "She is a truly imaginative poet, whose imagination is authoritative and transformative. She leads us into altered or emptied landscapes. […] Each poem is a world complete, and often they move between worlds, as in the beautiful ‘A Bridge between Two Counties.’ These are potent poems, with dense, captivating sound and a certain magic that proves not only to be believable but necessary, in fact, to our understanding of the world around us."

Ní Chuilleanáin is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Acts and Monuments (1966), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award; The Magdalene Sermon (1989), which was selected as one of the three best poetry volumes of the year by the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Book Prize Committee; Selected Poems (2009); and The Sun-fish (2010). She translated Ileana Malancioiu’s After the Raising of Lazarus (2005) and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s The Water Horse (2001, co-translated with Medbh McGuckian). Ní Chuilleanáin’s work has been featured in several anthologies, including The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000 (1999, edited by Peggy O’Brien).

Since 1975 she has edited the literary magazine Cyphers, and she has also edited Poetry Ireland Review. She has taught at Trinity College Dublin since 1966. With her husband, poet Macdara Woods, she divides her time between Ireland and Italy.

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is one of Ireland's foremost poets. For decades, along with the late Eavan Boland, she has been a proponent of women poets in Ireland. I saw the two of them in the mid-1990's at a festival of Irish arts at the Kennedy Center. At that time there were only a few women poets being published in Ireland.

Ní Chuilleanáin's poems often refer to historical events, and ancient history. Many of her poems are about nuns, including the history of Magdalene Laundries and mother-baby homes. Her poems are opaque, but knowing she has aunts who were nuns provides a context for a number of them. Her older poems are denser. As she matured as a poet, her themes included domestic scenes. Ní Chuilleanáin is a poet that must be read by those who are aficionados of Irish poetry.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous collection. There's so much here from deeply felt personal observations to dips into history to a few nun themed poems. There's a great sense of observation throughout. The language is so precise. Lovely edition as published by Gallery Press.

[Morbid Swither · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, my blind is mown. This book deserves 10 stars. Poetry of the most raw and elegant power. To read again starting…now.