Eilean Ni Chuilleanain Libri

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a consummate poet whose revelatory imagery and sensibility are unrivaled in depth and refinement. The Boys of Bluehill displays all of the insight and mystery that characterize her best work ("The forest floats over the land, / the island slides across the sea", "they are thin as air, as a leaf that has stayed / a century inside a book"). These qualities make the most accessible of poems deeply resonant and the most complex ones worth many readings. The themes of music, religion, art, language, and nature unwind a fable of being and perception which is unmistakably hers. From the memory-laden "An Information" and the visionary Skelligs poems, through the haunting "Who Were Those Travellers," on to the ars poetica of "Dream Shine" and "The Words Collide," this volume continually draws us in to its own extraordinary perspectives: ....Along the alleys the wind whispered to me: open your hand, let it fall down, whatever you were holding, let it lie until the day after, let it go, let it lie until it is blown to the river; do not look back to see whose hand finds it, or where it is hidden again when found. These enigmas of hiding and discovery are ours to find and unravel.

A renowned Irish poet, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain has published 7 collections of poetry. Born in Cork City in 1942, her collections include Acts and Monuments (1972), Site of Ambush (1975), The Second Voyage (1977), The Rose Geranium (1981), The Magdalene Sermon (1989), The Brazen Serpent (1994) and The Girl Who Married the Reindeer (2001).

The Mother House is rich with images of orphans, exiles, migrants, decay, destruction, famine, disaster, the cloistered, the drowned, the marginalized, as well as disappearance and memory, music and loss. The poems speak of histories, in Ireland and elsewhere, as allegories of our age. Yet, the poetic is not offered as a salvo or a salve, for as the poet questions, "We made the long journey // to deliver the gesture, but who has noticed us?" Ní Chuilleanain nevertheless proves that when the mirror is held at the right angle, the past can shed a telling light upon the present, observing with great acumen, "it was like history, held there / in view of another lifetime." In this remarkable volume, art and literature reflect human suffering and survival across many frontiers.

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.