Wake Forest University Press

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Born in Lancastershire, England, in 1952, to Irish physicians, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill grew up in the Irish-speaking areas of West Kerry and Tipperary. She studied English and Irish at University College, Cork, where she has subsequently taught. In 1973, she married Turkish geologist Dogan Leflef and lived abroad in Turkey and Holland for seven years.

She has held the Burns Chair of Irish Studies at Boston College,  the Humboldt Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University, and the Naughton Fellow of Irish Studies at Notre Dame. She was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry, the prestigious cross-border academic chair in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She lives in Dublin with her husband and four children.

She has won numerous international awards, including the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the American Ireland Fund Literary Award.  Her works have been translated into French, German, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Estonian, Japanese, and English. She is one of the few women Irish poets who write exclusively in Irish and has been a major influence in revitalizing the Irish language in modern poetry. In her work, she skillfully negotiates between the older forms, fables, and idioms of Ireland and the commodity culture, depth-psychology, and Eurospeak of a modern world.

She has published four collections of poems in Irish, An Dealg Droighin (1981) and Féar Suaithinseach (1984) Feis (1991), Cead Aighnis (1998).  All four of her collections in Irish has won the Seán Ó Ríordáin Award. Selected Poems/Rogha Dánta with translations by Michael Hartnett was published in 1986. She is also the author of the forthcoming Fifty Minute Mermaid. She has also published several plays for children, librettos, screenplays, and essays. She was the contemporary poetry editor of the fourth volume of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.

Pharaoh’s Daughter, a bilingual book of new and selected poems with translations into English by thirteen Irish poets, was published in North America by Wake Forest University Press, along with The Astrakhan Cloak, a selection of poems from Feis, with translations by Paul Muldoon. Her work has been anthologized in numerous collections, including The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry, 1967-2000. In 2000, Wake Forest published The Water Horse, a bilingual edition from Cead Aighnis, with translations by Medbh McGuckian and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.

Video of Ni Dhomhnaill's poem "Athair" ("Father"):

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Available books by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill:

Click one of the books listed below for more information, or see all books by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.

The Water Horse

The Astrakhan Cloak

Pharaoh's Daughter