Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a consummate poet whose revelatory imagery and sensibility are unrivaled in depth and refinement. The Boys of Bluehill displays all of the insight and mystery that characterize her best work ("The forest floats over the land, / the island slides across the sea", "they are thin as air, as a leaf that has stayed / a century inside a book"). These qualities make the most accessible of poems deeply resonant and the most complex ones worth many readings. The themes of music, religion, art, language, and nature unwind a fable of being and perception which is unmistakably hers. From the memory-laden "An Information" and the visionary Skelligs poems, through the haunting "Who Were Those Travellers," on to the ars poetica of "Dream Shine" and "The Words Collide," this volume continually draws us in to its own extraordinary perspectives: ....Along the alleys the wind whispered to me: open your hand, let it fall down, whatever you were holding, let it lie until the day after, let it go, let it lie until it is blown to the river; do not look back to see whose hand finds it, or where it is hidden again when found. These enigmas of hiding and discovery are ours to find and unravel.
About the Author: Born in Cork in 1942, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin graduated from University College Cork in 1962, with a BA in English and History, followed by a MA in English in 1964, and she also studied at Oxford University. Ní Chuilleanáin was Associate Professor of English, Dean of the Faculty of Arts (Letters), and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin until her retirement in 2011. Since then she has continued to teach an option on John Donne and also contributes to the M.Phil in Medieval Language, Literature and Culture, and to the M.Phils in Literary Translation and Comparative Literature. Ní Chuilleanáin edits the literary journal Cyphers with two other poet-editors, including her husband MacDara Woods. She and her husband have a son, Niall. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is often cited not only as a major poet in the generation after Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, and Richard Murphy, but also as the foremost female poet now writing in Ireland and Great Britain. In 1992, she was awarded the prestigious O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award by The Irish American Cultural Institute. Her most recent volume, The Boys of Bluehill (2015), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her previous volumes include Acts and Monuments (1966), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award; Site of Ambush (1975); The Second Voyage (1977), which included selections from the previous two volumes; The Magdalene Sermon and Earlier Poems (1991); The Brazen Serpent (1995); The Girl Who Married the Reindeer (2002); Selected Poems (2009); The Sun-fish (2010), which won the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and The Legend of the Walled-Up Wife (2012), translations from the Romanian poetry of Ileana M?l?ncioiu. With Medbh McGuckian, Ní Chuilleanáin also co-translated the poems of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill in The Water Horse (2001).