My Favourite Female Poet – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin born 28 November 1942) is an Irish poet and academic born in Cork.Ní Chuilleanáin is a founder of the literary magazine Cyphers.  She is married with one son. Her first collection won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1973. In 2010 The Sun-fish was the winner of the Canadian-based International Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award. Educated in Cork and Oxford, she is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and a member of Aosdána.

Poetry collections

• 1972: Acts and Monuments, Dublin: The Gallery Press.
• 1975: Site of Ambush, Dublin: The Gallery Press.
• 1977: The Second Voyage, Dublin: The Gallery Press; Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 1977, 1991.
• 1981: The Rose Geranium, Dublin: The Gallery Press.
• 1986: The Second Voyage, Dublin: The Gallery Press; Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books; Winston-Salem, Wake Forest University Press, 1991.
• 1989: The Magdalene Sermon, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press (shortlisted for the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award). Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Wake Forest University Press, 1991
• 1994: The Brazen Serpent, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press;Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Wake Forest University Press, 1995.
• 2001: The Girl Who Married the Reindeer, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press;Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Wake Forest University Press, 2002.
• 2008: Selected Poems, Gallery Press, London: Oldcastle and Faber; Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Wake Forest University Press, 2009.
• 2009: The Sun-fish, Gallery Press; Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 2010 (winner of the 2010 International Griffin Poetry Prize).

Selected Poems : Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin: Selected Poems, ISBN: 978-1-930630-44-4

“The rags of language are streaming like weathervanes,
Like weeds in water they turn with the tide, as he turns
Back and forth the looking-glass pages, the words
Pouring and slippery like the silk thighs of the tomcat
Pouring through the slit in the fence, lightly,
Until he 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.”

http://wfupress.wfu.edu/catalog/eilean-ni-chuilleanain-selected-poems/

More Writings By Her:

• 2013: Translation, Right or Wrong, ed., with Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and Susana Bayó Belenguer, Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• 2010: Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early English Literature, 1350-1680, ed., with John Flood, Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• 2009: Translation and Censorship: Patterns of Communication and Interference, ed., with Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and David Parris, Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• 2003: The Wilde Legacy, ed., Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• 2001: As I Was Among Captives: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary, 1922-23″: Cork University Press.

The Sister, by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin