The Gallery Press

To celebrate the wonders of her work on the occasion of her 80th birthday an array of international writers have selected a poem by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and provide an essay on their choice. Edited by Peter Fallon

To celebrate the wonders of her work on the occasion of her 80th birthday an array of international writers have selected a poem by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and provide an essay on their choice. Edited by Peter Fallon

Poems in The Mother House range from the broad, surprising narrative swerve of ‘She Was at the Haymaking’ and the mysterious wound in ‘A Journey’ to the exact detail of ‘the vessels tugging at their tether’ and the lighthouse keeper ‘watching the great revolving spokes / hitting the piled castles of spray’. Stories of historical figures (including the author’s relations) are filtered through tellings. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s meticulous, probing art is like no other. As she writes in ‘Resemblances’, ‘Like everything that I deal with now the room / has a double, a frill of light surrounding it.’

Poems in The Mother House range from the broad, surprising narrative swerve of ‘She Was at the Haymaking’ and the mysterious wound in ‘A Journey’ to the exact detail of ‘the vessels tugging at their tether’ and the lighthouse keeper ‘watching the great revolving spokes / hitting the piled castles of spray’. Stories of historical figures (including the author’s relations) are filtered through tellings. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s meticulous, probing art is like no other. As she writes in ‘Resemblances’, ‘Like everything that I deal with now the room / has a double, a frill of light surrounding it.’