Collected Poems | Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Collected Poems gathers nine collections of poetry, from Acts and Monuments (1972) to The Mother House (2020), as well as new poems and translations. Her poetry is scrupulously controlled but also continuously startling, using the language of history, religion, landscape, and myth. Travelers, pilgrims, and women—especially the veiled subject of the nun—remind us of our deepest inner sanctum with its litany of spiritual truths, human fears, and needs. These images also catalogue the importance of the ordinary and the domestic as metaphors for human experiences and emotions. Ní Chuilleanáin allows those who have been silenced by history to surface in art as surreal but living presences. It is now unquestionably apparent that she is one the major poets in contemporary Ireland.