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Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…rdinary meanings assemble.” – Carmine Starnino, Poetry Foundation Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is one of the few women Irish poets who writes exclusively in Irish and has been a major influence in revitalizing the Irish language in modern poetry. Born in Lancastershire, England in 1952, Ní Dhomhnaill moved to Ireland at age five, growing up in the Irish-speaking areas of West Kerry and Tipperary. She studied Irish and English at University College in Cork,…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Persephone Suffering from SAD” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…lar gem because of the collaboration of three great female Irish poets; Ní Dhomhnaill’s poems are in Irish, with English translations by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian. These poems present other convergences, particularly the mingling of mythology with modern life as in today’s poem, where we encounter the Persephone of Greek myth in current times. A quick note: The Irish phrase in the last line, Céad Míle Fáilte, is a common greeting…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Melusine” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…of which was included in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. Ní Dhomhnaill’s narrative poem, “Melusine,” is based on folklore most famously captured by the 14th century French writer Jean d’Arras. In the tale, Count Raymondin meets the beautiful yet mysterious Melusine in the forest, and the two fall in love instantly. Melusine’s only condition for marriage is that she may spend her Saturdays in solitude in her room. Raymondin agrees re…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “A Postcard Home” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…es. Our first selection for National Translation Month comes from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poem sequence “The Voyage”. The poem’s narrator struggles with displacement as she considers her inability to afford a gift that connects her to a distanced loved one. The translator’s challenge is to preserve the text’s authenticity while matching the musicality of the Irish—a case in point, Paul Muldoon chooses the English phrase “over and above” for the Iris…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Winter Beachhead” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…tough to endure the cold, long months of winter before spring. In Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s meditative “Winter Beachhead,” translated by Medbh McGuckian, she acknowledges the beauty of a wintry beach scene and encourages patience “for the fullness to come.” Winter Beachhead This is the starkest hour of the shore when it’s purged and cleansed as a Sabbath door. There’s a brim of lather when the tide’s in as the waves go on with their day’s washing. No…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Ceist na Teangan / The Language Issue” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…rite bilingual poems, “Ceist na Teangan / The Language Issue”, by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill from our fall publication, The Wake Forest Book of Irish’s Women’s Poetry. Ceist na Teangan Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh i mbáidín teangan faoi mar a leagfá naíonán i gcliabhán a bheadh fite fuaite de dhuilleoga feileastraim is bitiúmin agus pic bheith cuimilte lena thóin ansan é a leagadh síos i measc na ngiolcach is coigeal na mban sí le taobh na habhann, féachai…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “As for the Quince” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
“As for the Quince” is an Irish-language poem written by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (the original title “An Crann”) then translated by Paul Muldoon into English. In the weeks when spring first dares to remind us that Nature’s sometimes subtle rhythms impact our entire wellbeing, this poem is a timely reflection of growth and loss. This is an airy and vibrant poem with a perfectly tangy twist at the end that is worth the read at any point of the year….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Smell of Blood” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
…now how many bars of Sunlight soap Have shrunk into exhausted slivers Since I’m stuck forever with this stink of blood That’s on my hands. –Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, translated by Ciaran Carson, from Pharaoh’s Daughter (1993)…
Continue ReadingNuala Ní Dhomhnaíll featured on passport
Ireland revealed its new passport design on Monday, and people are talking. The majority of the media hype revolves around the borderless map of Ireland on page three. The map’s subtle disregard of Ireland’s political north-south divide in favour of the topographical depiction of the island as a whole is meant to emphasize citizenship over territoriality, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told The Irish Times. In addition, WFU Pre…
Continue ReadingFrank Sewell on Editing and Translating Máirtín Ó Direáin: An Interview
…me women writers have responded tangentially to Ó Direáin’s work: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, while living in Turkey and surrounded by the Turkish language, used to listen to recordings of Ó Direáin reading his poems, recordings which gave her goosebumps and which contributed to her return to Ireland and to writing poetry in Irish. Having said that, she does not share all of his views or his worries, for example, about being “stoite” or uprooted. In the…
Continue ReadingThe Water Horse
…tion between such talented individuals, the results are literary magic. Ní Dhomhnaill’s style is at once erudite and down-to-earth, cosmopolitan and parochial.” – Niall McGrath, The Black Mountain Review “Through creating this volume, these three poets have created a rich tapestry that invites a reader to return again and again, picking up different threads to follow and to enjoy.” – Tramble T. Turner, Irish Literary Supplement “This happy merging…
Continue ReadingPharaoh’s Daughter
…merica as a companion volume to The Astrakhan Cloak, new poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill with translations by Paul Muldoon. Pharaoh’s Daughter is in Irish and English, with translations by thirteen of Ireland’s leading poets: Ciaran Carson, Michael Coady, Peter Fallon, Michael Hartnett, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Tom MacIntyre, Derek Mahon, John Montague, Paul Muldoon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and George O’Brien Reviews “[T]he br…
Continue ReadingThe Astrakhan Cloak
The Astrakhan Cloak offers poems selected from Feis, Ní Dhomhnaill‘s collection in Irish, and translated by Paul Muldoon. Ní Dhomhnaill’s skillful negotiations between the forms, fables, and idioms of an older Ireland and the commodity culture, depth-psychology, and Eurospeak of modern Ireland are disclosed by the playful, accurate language of Muldoon who has been called the “most charismatic poet” of the British Isles. The Astrakhan Cloak is in…
Continue ReadingValentine’s Day
…reciate the small things in life that go into your own happiness. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill “Nude” pertains to the more physical side of love. She vividly describes the male body while simultaneously turning an old Irish tradition on its head. We hope everyone has a Happy Valentine’s Day! The Scissors Ceremony What they are doing makes their garden feel like a big room. I spy on them through the hedge, through a hundred keyholes. He sits in a deckchair….
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry 1967–2000
…oetry from Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rita Ann Higgins, Paula Meehan, Mary O’Malley, Kerry Hardie, and Moya Cannon. The content in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry 1967-2000 is selected and edited by Peggy O’Brien. Reviews “[T]his collection is one of the first proofs that Irish women poets have collectively emerged from the shadows of their brothers—and that they have been on the cuttin…
Continue ReadingIf All the World and Love Were Young
…ry poem in this book is a marvel. Taken all together they make up a work of almost miraculous depth and beauty.” – Sally Rooney “A remarkable requiem for the poet’s mother and for the worlds of childhood imagination … a beautiful, vital, generous work of art.” – Lily Ní Dhomhnaill, The Stinging Fly A Sunday Times, New Statesman and Telegraph Book of the Year 2019 Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection Winner of the E. M. Forster Awa…
Continue ReadingThe WFU Press Holiday Sale & Gift-Giving Guide
…nguage might appreciate Máirtín Ó Direáin, Máire Mhac an tSaoi or Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. And many of our Irish poets have translated from other languages, such as Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Legend of the Walled-Up Wife, a translation of the Romanian poet Ileana Mӑlӑncioiu. Check out the “Translation” section of our online catalog. 5. For the person who has too many books: Is your friend unable to leave a bookstore without adopting something new for th…
Continue ReadingBone and Marrow Book Tour
…| 6:30 Public evening reception and book launch. Learn more about the bookshop on their website. Cúirt International Festival of Literature Galway | Sunday, April 10, 4:00 pm In this session Ola Majekodunmi, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Alan Titley will read and discuss some of their favorite poems from Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior. Visit the Festival website for more information on this event and view the full program here….
Continue ReadingEndings and Beginnings
…ity College Dublin. He follows in the footsteps of John Montague, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Paul Durcan, and Michael Longley as former Professors of Poetry. Many of his lectures over the past three years are kept on the Ireland Chair of Poetry website. But, like the leaves of autumn changing on the trees, Clifton is transitioning. The Holding Centre, a book of poetry that Clifton wrote while in his position as Professor of Poetry, will be released in t…
Continue ReadingThe Miraculous Máire Mhac an tSaoi
…nts as Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The Miraculous Parish solidifies her reputation as the greatest living Irish language poet. The title refers to Mhac an tSaoi’s early childhood in the “miraculous parish” of Dún Chaoin (Dunquin), a Gaeltacht village in County Kerry, where she learned Irish. In the author’s preface, Mhac an tSaoi writes, “I remember a distinguished Celtic scholar saying, ‘When a…
Continue ReadingMáire Mhac an tSaoi
…uld be heartbroken if [the Irish language] were to die but I don’t think I would be heartbroken if it survived as a literary language. As long as I’m alive, Irish is alive.” Praise for Máire Mhac an tSaoi “A generation before the groundbreaking achievements of Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Rita Ann Higgins, and others, and in more daunting social circumstances, Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s po…
Continue ReadingPoetryFest
…Over the weekend, the Irish Arts Center in New York City hosted its 5th annual PoetryFest. Contemporary Irish poets including our own Conor O’Callaghan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Colette Bryce (from the Wake Forest Series 3) all read poetry at this event. We are delighted to be publishing O’Callaghan’s new book, The Sun King, later this year….
Continue ReadingThe Miraculous Parish/An paróiste míorúilteach
…eneration before the groundbreaking achievements of Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Rita Ann Higgins, and others, and in more daunting social circumstances, Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry speaks to and from the intimate experience of women at a time when women’s voices were largely inaudible, on the margins of Irish literature and society. A Miraculous Parish is a bilingual selection of he…
Continue ReadingMedbh McGuckian
…2016. With Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Medbh McGuckian co-translated Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s collection The Water Horse (2000); she is also the author of Horsepower Pass By! A Study of the Car in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (1999) and is the editor of an anthology of younger Northern Irish poets, The Big Striped Umbrella (1985). Praise for Medbh McGuckian “Dickinsonian in her foregrounding of female domestic experience and the intangible realms of drea…
Continue ReadingEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
…Medbh McGuckian, Ní Chuilleanáin also co-translated the poems of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill in The Water Horse (2001). Wake Forest University Press published her Collected Poems in 2021 and will publish a new volume, The Map of the World, in 2024. *Author photo by Niall Hartnett Praise for Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin “[Ní Chuilleanáin’s work] thrives on the creepings, rustlings and imperceptible burgeonings of life which are the opposite of sureness and soli…
Continue ReadingThe Poetry Project
…(Previous installments featured poems by fellow Wake Forest poets Thomas Kinsella, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Vona Groarke, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and many more.) Enjoy!…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry
…leanáin, Eavan Boland, Eva Bourke, Medbh McGuckian, Kerry Hardie, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Mary O’Malley, Rita Ann Higgins, Paula Meehan, Moya Cannon, Katie Donovan, Vona Groarke, Enda Wyley, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly, and Leontia Flynn. This edition of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry is edited by and includes a new preface by Peggy O’Brien. View the Table of Contents Electronic Bibliography (PDF) Reviews “The new additions to…
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