Wake: Up to Poetry
Did You Know…
We’re back! After weeks of working on redesigning our blog we have finally finished and are excited to post again. Today is the first in what will become a series of posts on little known facts about our poets. We will start with one of the poets who just joined us on our Women’s Anthology Tour, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Did you know that her great-uncle Joseph Mary Plunkett signed the 1916 Proclamation during the Easter Rising in Ireland? The Easter Rising was an attempt by Irish republicans to establish the Irish Republic during World War I when all of Ireland was still under control of the British Empire. The 1916 Proclamation was a document that declared Ireland’s independence from the British. The uprising did not end up being successful, but it did lead to physical force republicanism becoming more important in Irish politics, and it set the stage for the Irish War of Independence in 1919.
For more facts about Dr. Ní Chuilleanáin please visit her author page on our website.
-Elizabeth
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great blog!
from Eilean Ni Chuilleanain:
JM Plunkett (1887-1916) was my great-uncle, I'm not THAT old.
He was a poet who published one collection at the age of 24; his collected poems were published in 1917 after his execution, edited by my grandmother Geraldine Dillon
All seven signatories of the Proclamation were executed by the British.
These are facts that are important to me, and they are fundamental to the history of Ireland in the twentieth century. If anyone wants to refer to my family history, please get it right.
Link to 1916 proclamation: http://www.nationalprintmuseum.ie/images/proclamation.jpg
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Professor (emeritus) School of English
Trinity College Dublin