The Sun-Fish

by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s The Sun-fish deftly displays the poet’s gift for the allegorical, verging at times on parable, yet always with a sense of lived experience and a strong acknowledgement of the everyday. From the dedicatory epithalamium to the concluding poem, Ní Chuilleanáin’s enigmatic verse exudes deep but unpretentious wisdom, often asking simple questions that demand complex answers. In poems on nature, writing, folklore, religion, love and grief, and on many homes in different places, we are taught to “see who is there / In the whirling dance” so that we may trace the line between illusion and reality and grasp the “moment thinning the curtain, / Real, like the tricks of light.” Winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Genres: Poetry, Irish Literature

Paperback

First published August 1, 2010

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

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eilean Ni Chuilleanain has apparently been accused by one past reviewer of lacking "killer instinct", whatever that is supposed to mean when one is crafting poetry. (At any rate, Ni Chuilleanain turns that phrase to striking advantage in one of the most vibrant pieces in this collection.) The poems in The Sun-fish are dense, demand undivided attention and are often understated, sometimes to a fault. However, Ni Chuilleanain's simultaneously grounded and transcendent verse pays off with fresh, sometimes pointed insights into human resilience.

Deserving winner of the 2010 International Griffin Poetry Prize, The Sun-fish even shades into the acerbic with selections such as the delightfully sly "Vertigo" ("How did such smart women acquire such a mother?"). "The Sister" is a haunting selection, which Ni Chuilleanain read recently at the Griffin Poetry Prize readings in the spring of 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBl3Fg...

Reflective reading will reward the patient reader of this deceptively slim but surprisingly rich and deep collection.

More information about Ni Chuilleanain can be found on the Griffin Poetry Prize Web site, at:

http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awa...

[Liam Malone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't fully understand nor grasp each poem. So for me this collection was only okay, but worth another read later this winter.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has good story-telling, but very little music and freshness in the language, which truly disappoints me as a reader.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

lines in here all molar & jag, like a mountain spree. lovly celt/dark below the water , below the ground