Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
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.
“When you look out across the fields And you both see the same star Pitching its tent on the point of the steeple — That is the time to set out on your journey, With half a loaf and your mother’s blessing. Leave behind the places that you knew: All that you leave behind you will find once more, You will find it in the stories; The sleeping beauty in her high tower With her talking cat asleep Solid beside her feet — you will see her again. When the cat wakes up he will speak in Irish and Russian And every night he will tell you a different tale About the firebird that stole the golden apples, Gone every morning out of the emperor’s garden, And about the King of Ireland’s Son and the Enchanter’s Daughter. The story the cat does not know is the Book of Ruth And I have no time to tell you how she fared When she went out at night and she was afraid, In the beginning of the barley harvest, Or how she trusted to strangers and stood by her word: You will have to trust me, she lived happily ever after. ”