Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry

Eilean Ni Chuilleanain - The Girl Who Married the Reindeer (clothbound)

"Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's new collection of poems, The Girl who Married the Reindeer, brings together poems so elegant and difficult, rich and haunting, that this slim volume stands as both her finest achievement to date and a landmark in contemporary poetry." Helen Emmitt, Irish Literary Supplement

"Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's best work (of which this collection is unquestionably part) spins ... elements in a liminal landscape between this world and another, far more marvelous one." Jenny Ludwig, Boston Review

In The Girl Who Married The Reindeer, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin radically redesigns the language and form of poetic narrative. In poems about journeys to worlds real and metaphorical, she reveals deft crossings of borders, linguistic boundaries, and cultures. Beginning mid-journey, the poems often arrive at mysterious destinations, as when a scholar
"…reaches the language that has no word for his,
No word for hers, and is brought up sudden
Like a boy in a story faced with a small locked door.
Who is that he can hear panting on the other side?
The steam of her breath is turning the locked lock green."
                                               from   Gloss / Clós / Glas

$18.95
2002   69 pages
clothbound
ISBN 978-1-930630-07-9