I should respond with my own disclaimer: I should feel bad for wrapping you up in this book, because it is such a giant mememememe my turn ME! treat to trick people into reading it, because I love talking about it so much.  Selfish Lanea.  Poetry Crazy Lanea.  So, sorry in advance, but thank you for reading Nuala. 

I should start with Ciaran Carson.  He’s a genius, and one of Nuala’s translators, and a true Classicist.  He’s done the big hard work of translating poetry from a few tough languages.  And I got to speak to him after a reading a while back.  It was a reading given by several Irish poets, some of whom wrote in Irish and some of whom didn’t, but all of whom had given a fair amount of thought to the language and to Irish-ness.  I was one of the only Celticists in a room full of nice people who, by and large, didn’t know much about the poets or their work.  That’s a common problem at Irish Studies events.  In the question and answer session, the moderator refused to call on me.  I don’t know why.  I was so frustrated I was on the verge of tears, listening to perfectly nice people ask inane questions of some of the greatest poets of a generation, all the while holding my arm up like I did in third grade when I knew the answer and my classmates didn’t.  It was distressing for the poets.  It was distressing Carson particularly, because he could sense that I had the question of the hour, and he wanted to answer it.  He stutters, so the stress was going to make it harder for him to answer, but he clearly wanted to address me.  Carson finally called on me himself at the end of the program, saying something about how I had already exhibited far more patience than any of the "old people in the room" had. 

I asked how poets who translate maintain some division between their own craft and creation and the work they are translating.  How you find a dividing line between poet writing her own words and a poet translating for someone else’s work.  Carson said, falteringly but absolutely sure: "It’s all translation.  Every jot of verse ever is a work of translation.  Any poet who doesn’t know their verse is a translation of another poet’s words or of an image or an experience isn’t worth reading."  I cried.  He got misty.  And the perfectly nice people looked at us both like we were crazy.   

And, of course, Ciaran is one of Nuala’s translators.  He tends to stick close to the literal meaning of each work.  Really, most of them do.  Nuala now is playing us a little bit when she expresses worry.  When she first got started, she may have been very worried.  But now she has a lot of editorial control over her translations, and unlike many poets whose work is translated into English, she is fluent in English and can tell if someone botches up her poems.  Nuala is perfectly capable of translating her own work, and yet she chooses not to.  I love that about her.  She loves Irish, but she also loves collaboration.  And she’s a bit of a minx on some level.  Having other people translate her poems ultimately makes them serve her.  Naughty Nuala.  All the while, she won’t brook this nonsense that she is her translators’ muse.  No no no.  They are her employees.  They are sometimes her partners.  But she is chief poet in this tribe.  Many of Nuala’s poems have been translated multiple times–I can get ISBNs to you if you want particular versions. 

I happily encourage you to seek out Medbh McGuckian.  She’s another giantess of Irish poetry.  A bit tougher for some to love, but a true talent.  I think what you’re responding to is Medbh’s taste in subject matter.  She is picking certain poems to translate, and I think she’s picking the poems you’d like best if you were reading the Irish. 

So now the religion and the myth.  Nuala was raised Catholic, as were most Irish citizens of her generation.  And she is well educated, so she is adept at using allusions.  "The Bond" or "Gaesa" is a poem that will make more sense to the initiated.  A gaesa is a type of oath that comes up in Celtic mythology pretty frequently, particularly in the Ulster Cycle, which is my favorite group of myth texts to read and translate.  A gaesa is a bond someone puts on you that you cannot break for fear of peril.  Think of Delphic prophecies, but with different accents, and with the cursed or bound as almost-willing participants in the manipulations of their own fates.  Gaesa are often foisted upon humans by Gods disguised as humans, and they generally don’t make sense until the whole story unfolds.  The old woman in the poem is probably the Washer by the Well, who is generally the Crone manifestation of the Morrigan (Great Queen), an Irish Goddess of War, Sovereignty, and Fertility.  She is forcing the speaker to be a traveler.  Nuala left her own country to live in Turkey with her husband’s family, she was raised in several homes, she is trapped between languages.  And she, like the characters in the myths, doesn’t know where to find the Woman and how to complete the Gaesa.   The significance of the numbers is really that Nuala is using the form that shows up in the Old Irish texts of the myths she’s riffing off of. 

In "Night Fishing" we’re getting mythology again.  The speaker is thinking of selkies, if I’m guessing right, which are like mermaids.  Seals in water, humans on land.  Again we get Nuala’s in-between status and her connection to myth.  It also makes me think of the great famine, when many Irish people were left with nothing to eat but seaweed and raw winkles, and many of them died of it food poisoning caused by that diet.  Those foods have a symbolic connection to both salvation and poison.  We’re also seeing the well-worn concept of words as food–the book the English girl offers the speaker is supposed to offer some sort of sustenance and safety, but really just makes it hard to fish.  And then there’s the red gold.  Red gold shows up constantly in Irish mythology.  It was highly prized, and it’s often used as an epithet in the myths.  Rather than "gray-eyed Athena" we get "red gold hanging from ear and braid" (a bit of one of my pieces, there).  I think the author is equating Englishness with learning very specifically because she spent much of her youth in an English boarding school, rather than at home in her Irish-language local school. 

And I’ll read 29 this afternoon. 

Okay, big disclaimer here. I realized as I wrote this that there was no way I had the time to write the 20+ pages that I would need to write to really discuss this work.  So basically, this is an effort to dip my toe in the discussion. As we go, I will post more, but I thought it was about time we started talking about some poetry around here. So here’s a little poetry talk. It’s not exactly a brilliant thesis or anything, but then, this is just a blog, not English 562, right?

It’s been a long time since I read much poetry in translation. I was for a long time fixated on a couple of Hebrew-language poets—namely Yehuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch. I even studied a little Hebrew with the idea of someday being able to read the originals. (Ask me if I remember a single word of Hebrew—ha!) This is to say, I know how insanely different various translations can be. I would sometimes see multiple translations of certain poems, and they may as well have been different poems entirely. Some of my favorite poems were also some of my least favorites in a different translation. It’s an odd feeling, reading someone’s work, knowing that you’re not really reading their work, but more of a collaboration, or even a game of Exquisite Corpse. And Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill obviously realizes this herself, in the final poem of the collection, “The Language Issue:” (p. 155, trans. Paul Muldoon)

I place my hope on the water

in this little boat

of the language, the way a body might put

an infant

in a basket of intertwined

iris leaves,

its underside proofed

with bitumen and pitch,

then set the whole thing down amidst the sedge

and bulrushes by the edge

of a river

only to have it borne hither and thither,

not knowing where it might end up;

in the lap, perhaps,

of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

Using the story of Moses’ birth, Ní Dhomhnaill illustrates how sending her poetry out to be translated is an act of faith. A particularly poignant dilemma, I would imagine, for a poet who has chosen to write her poetry in a language that has largely fallen on deaf ears in contemporary Irish culture. While she has made the bold choice to write in the language she chooses, she realizes the necessity of sending it out to a wider audience, “not knowing where it might end up.”

On the translation issue, I find it interesting that time and again, when I would find a poem that I particularly liked in the collection, more often than not, it was translated by Medbh McGuckian. Perhaps I should seek out a collection of her original work? But I also wonder, if in part, she just happens to be drawn to similar themes as me. In truth, it is likely a little bit of both. But it does, I think, draw attention to the problem of reading poetry in translation. For the poems that I didn’t like as well—would I have loved them in a different translation? I’d be curious, if there are multiple translations of some of these poems available, to see the differences between versions.

There seem to be a lot of Judeo-Christian references in her poems (as above), but also what appear to be numerous mythological references. This is where I have no idea what I’m talking about, and will lead me to ask lots of questions. I don’t know my Celtic mythology or Irish folklore. So those of you that do (ahem–Lanea) please speak up as necessary. One of my favorite poems in the collection is the first one, “The Bond:” (p. 13, trans. Medbh McGuckian)

If I use my forbidden hand

To raise a bridge across the river,

All the work of the builders

Has been blown up by sunrise,

A boat comes up the river by night

With a woman standing in it,

Twin candles lit in her eyes

And two oars in her hands.

She unsheathes a pack of cards,

‘Will you play forfeits?’ she says.

We play and she beats me hands down,

And she puts three banns upon me:

Not to have two meals in one house,

Not to pass two nights under one roof,

Not to sleep twice with the same man

Until I find her. When I ask her address,

‘If it were north I’d tell you south.

If it were east, west.’ She hooks

Off in a flash of lightning, leaving me

Stranded on the bank,

My eyes full of candles,

And the two dead oars.

There is so much to look at in this poem, I hardly know where to begin. It seems to reek of mythical references that I can’t identify. (If I can’t identify them, how do I know they’re there? I don’t know, but can’t you just feel it?) First, there seems to be some significance to the use of the numbers: twin candles, two oars, three banns, two meals, two nights, sleep twice, and at the end, the two dead oars. Someone help me here—I love this poem, but I don’t think I’m getting all of the references. (I love poems I don’t understand. Yeah, I said it. The more obtuse the better—like the woman of the poem—“If it were north I’d tell you south. / If it were east, west.”) I’d also just like to point out that I love the way many of her poems end with a variation on the opening stanza. There’s something wonderfully lyrical about it.

Some of my favorite poems also deal with themes of “Irishness” vs. “Englishness.” Perhaps it’s the Post-colonial Studies gal in me. Can’t help it—if it has to do with race, class, ethnicity or nationalism, I’m there, baby! The best example of this, I believe, is the poem, “Night Fishing.” (p. 65, trans. Medbh McGuckian)

It’s high time I took myself

Up the throat of the sea, under the cliff,

One hand feeling the growth

Of seaweed on massive rocks,

The other a freebooter

Out to land a fish.

There’s a strange girl in my company

Speaks with a fine English accent.

‘You there with the book-learning,’

Puts in my aunt from the other side,

‘The likes of you ought to be able to follow her.’

‘Sometimes,’ I answer, ‘sometimes

I can understand, but mostly

There’s nothing there but as if you heard

The sigh of some bedraggled snow

Untidily fall from the sky.’

‘Well, here’s a book you should

Keep to hand whenever you are in danger.’

‘But how will I manage to land

A fish with the same hand?’

‘Never mind that, do as I bid.’

So I took the book from her.

Now here I am, up to my throat

In sea, under the cliff,

With my right hand clinging

To the seaweed. On my left,

A scintillating, red-gold fish,

The length of a lady’s hand,

Is radiating toxic waves

And pirouetting

In and out of my reach.

The poem begins, “It’s high time I took myself / Up the throat of the sea…” This journey is for the purpose of fishing—but this is not ordinary fishing—the person fishing makes me think of a mermaid, all the way in the water, clutching at seaweed with one hand, the other bare hand grabbing for fish. There is a very physical, almost mythical connection to the “land” (and by land, I mean water), and the sea itself has human characteristics—a throat. The narrator is a young woman, and I interpeted this fishing expedition to be a sort of cultural rite of passage.

This first stanza stands in stark contrast to the next, when there is suddenly a “strange girl…/ with a fine English accent.” It seems to me that both of these young women are the narrator, and that she is being torn between two worlds, one which to her seems like a more “authentic” life (or at least the one more familiar to her), and the other one that seems very pedantic (and English). This is the world of ‘book-learning.” The narrator protests as her aunt pushes her into this world, that with a book in one hand, “’…how will I manage to land / A fish with the same hand?’” In the end, the narrator is “up to [her] throat / in the sea”, while the fish seem to taunt her because she does not have a hand free to grab them. It seems that she is attempting to connect with both worlds at once, as ineffectual as it may ultimately be. In many ways, the poem seems to be speaking to the author’s own background, having been born in England, learning Irish after moving to an Irish-speaking community in Ireland as a child. The author is that child with the book (English education) in one hand and the seaweed (her Irish cultural heritage) in the other. What I find interesting, if not altogether problematic, here is that there seems to be an almost inflated romanticism of “Irishness,” the kind that I would more expect to find from a colonial, not a post-colonial text. It is interesting to me that she would equate “Englishness” and “book-learning”, almost as if to preclude any authentically Irish intellectualism. Or perhaps someone else has a different reading of the poem? Any mythological or folkloric references that might add a new dimension?

Okey dokey. I feel like I’ve already talked too much, and I’ve only disccussed, what? Three poems? Let’s open this up to other folks and see where it goes. If I try to write anymore here, I’ll never finish this post. (Attention Christmas shoppers, cleanup in aisle four. Rachel’s brain exploded.)

(Oh, and an aside: Lanea and I couldn’t have possibly picked two more different poets to start this blog, but I almost wet myself when I read “The Smell of Blood” (p.75, trans. Ciaran Carson). It’s eerie how similar it is thematically to Berryman’s Dream Song #29, one of my favorites. Eerie. Keep an eye out for this one when we discuss the next book.)

So, my Aunt Judy’s birthday is coming up.  Judy asked for a felted purse like the one I made for my Mom a while back.  Since I’m trying to figure out how to make these bags more efficiently so that Tuatha can sell them, I figured I should go the knitting machine route with this one.  I used a single strand of Nature Spun in Blueberry, knitted a huge rectangle for the body of the bag, and then a long skinny one for the strap, using the number two plate for both.  And then I started sewing.  I know a lot of knitters have a hard time making up pieces, but I’m pretty comfortable with it.  This, obviously, was easy-peasy lemon-squeezy, since it was all straight lines.  But really, a few years of dress-making will wash the fear of knit-seaming right away from you.

Then, it was washing-up time.  I also tossed in those booties I made a couple of weeks ago.

The bag felted in no time.  I am now truly convinced that the double-stranding technique is foisted upon us by tricksy yarn marketers, and is wholly unnecessary most of the time.  Harumph.  I blocked it by stuffing it with the right books wrapped up in plastic and left it to hang overnight.  Meanwhile, I thought about fabrics.  And maybe I slept.

This morning, it was time to get back to the needles.  I let the furnace installers in and sequestered my scary self and my scary dog in the studio.  A little bit of measuring, a little bit of machine time, and a little bit of plastic needle-point canvas came together like so:

And then became one with the felt:

And then they all moved to Pennsylvania.

Now that I’ve been kind to the older sibling, I can show you the baby of the felt-family.  Lookie:

Damn those are cute.  Llama wool and mohair booties.  Lookie some more:

Hey, Peanut!  Come out.  You’re making your Mom really uncomfortable.  Don’t mess with Danish women.  Seriously.  She will have total control over you for years.  Do what she tells you know, and maybe she won’t name you Snorri.  Snorri Thorlson Overgard Dunn.

thirteen  official site

So, um, this is a downer of a post about a downer of a movie.  A good movie, but a downer nonetheless.   I would recommend it to anyone who is or wants to be a parent, and to anyone who teetered on the edge of propriety and safety in those horrible ‘tween years. 

Nikki Reed, the actress who plays Evie, co-authored the semi-autobiographical screenplay.  Jeremy Sisto, Holly Hunter, and Evan Rachel Wood all give startlingly good performances.  The subject matter is disturbing and frightening, but it’s familiar to many people, like me, who watched one friend after another crumble in Middle School. 

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Chris is my new best friend.  I heart Chris.  Look what was waiting in my mailbox:

I saw it and thought . .  . that’s a really big package for a two socks’ worth of yarn.  Look what she sent me:

That’s.  Wow.  That’s a bunch of nice yarn.  There’s lots of Regia, there–you can read that.  And above are two skeins of Wildfoote in Blueberry and two balls of gorgeous Cherry Tree Hill.  Mmmmmm.  Yarn.  And the best part is, I’ve never knit with any of these yarns.  I can admit it–I’ve been a bit obsessive about the Bearfoot.  But it’s branching out time. 

There’s no way I deserve all this niceness.  Cuz, you know, with the Crazy.  But I am busily attempting to live up to Chris’s kindness.  I’ve been arranging yarn gifting a bit, and working away on some knitted gifts.  I’m almost done with a present for Aunt Judy (the aunt Judy from the essay, donchayaknow), and am making some socks out of Lorna’s Laces Sportweight that my Sis-in-law was liking the looks of. 

I spent Friday working like a madwoman making the famous seven layer chocolate-hazelnut cake, using a traditional recipe from our Danish friend Christine’s family.  It was one of the most challenging cakes I’ve made, what with all of the meringue and the difficulties it causes trying to free the cakes from their pans.  It was a huge success, and I’m sure I’ll make it again.  But next time, there will be parchment paper.  And photos.  I promise photos.   Currently, I have a little bit of the cake itself and some pieces of broken layers and a container full of chocolate whipped cream.  Must. Not.  Eat.  Delicious.  Heaven.  For.  Dinner!

Once the cakes were squared away, I made a ton of food for our small group of guests (I think we hit 24 people, which isn’t terribly many for a KF Thanksgiving reunion.  We had a crown roast of pork stuffed with (drum roll please)  . . . pork.  The stuffing was lovely.  I was amazed we got any of it into the roast or the oven.  And we had two kinds of cheese fondue.  And roasted potatoes and homemade ice-cream, but, um, we didn’t serve those on the same plate or anything.  And I managed to take not one picture, because my camera’s batteries died.  But a fine time was had by all, and it was great to get folks from far (yay Mr. Mike showing up from Delaware!) and further (Dobbs all the way from San Diego–he’s our regular party-excuse generator).   

Long weekends with presents and baking and visits from far-flung friends are much nicer than weekdays with so much time in that stupid office.  Sigh.

Generosity is breaking out all over on Knitters Review.  Chris heard I only had enough sock yarn to make about ten pairs of socks (does that qualify as poverty among sock-knitters?  I thought I had plenty . . .), so she sent me some sock yarn.  I was so touched that when I heard that Vi loved Opal Petticoat but hadn’t been able to get any, I knew I had to send her some.  And, frankly, it would be stingy to keep all of the fun to ourselves, so we’re inviting all comers.  We’ve got Jane, we’ve got lella, we’ve got Minh, we’ve got Jayme and Rose-Amie and Boogie-Amy and  Kim and Angela and Corrina.  What I’m wondering is why we don’t have you?  Give yarn, get yarn . . . it may be the best game ever!

Here is how it works: each person agrees to give enough sock yarn to make a nice pair of socks, and each person will get enough sock yarn to make a nice pair of socks.  I’ve made up a master list, and will be matching yarn to recipients.  Email me if you want to join up (there’s a link over in the sidebar there, to the right).  I need to know the following about each participant:
Full Name and name you post under, if that’s different
If you’re a blogger, your address for the links
Mailing Address
Fiber allergies
Color and fiber preferences for sock yarns, within reason (we will not be upset if you say you don’t do self-patterning yarns, but we won’t reward you for demanding quivit)
Type and color of yarn you plan to give

We do need to set a cut-off date for folks to sign-up–I’d suggest either the end of November or the first week of December–vote below if you have a preference. 

And, well, we’ll run this a bit like a knit-along, mmmmkay?  Update us on when you send yarn, when you receive yarn, and what you make with it. 

No spoilers–don’t worry. 

Scott and I attempted to see a matinee on Saturday, and had to buy tickets for an evening show because the theater was so crowded.  It was worth the aggravation.  We ended up with an audience of teens, older kids, and adults.  I expect the 2:00 showing had too much screaming.  We had a few knitters, a few readers, and a respectful, engaged audience.   Ooh, and some of the folks in our theater were using reflectors, which means that our local theater is providing captions for audience members.  I hope this is becoming more common around the country. 

This is the most adult film in the series so far, and I think the best stand-alone film. Perish the thought, but there are people who don’t read the books, and this movie will please them. 

The central trio has grown into the roles a bit, though Watson and Radcliffe could both stand to take a page from Grint’s book and, you know, try to approach human facial expressions a bit more naturally.  Despite a lack of acting experience, each in the trio remains likable and fun to watch, so I have no real complaints about their work.  This film adds Brendan Gleeson, a personal favorite, as Mad-Eye Moody.  It’s a great performance.  And we get a touch of Miranda Richardson, everyone’s favorite Queenie, as Rita Skeeter.  We don’t get quite enough of Skeeter this time around, but that’s to be expected.  And Ralph Feinnes does a fantastic job, but we knew he would.  He’s been playing lots of bad guys lately, and he knows how to use his voice to be frightening. 

The filmmakers removed a great deal of material, but we knew they would.  Long  novels don’t make it onto the screen with every page in tact.  Apart from that, my only real complaint is that the CGI for the mer-people looks like crap.  Quit with the unnecessary CGI, people–if it looks bad, don’t use it.  You can put PEOPLE in COSTUMES and have them act–I swear it works.  And since Hollywood keeps giving acting jobs to singers, you can find some talented actors and costume designers for reasonable prices. 

Sorry about the lack of content these last few days.  The holidays were sneaking up on me, so I had to give them a sound talking to.   I have a gift to make, and instead of working on the gift the recipient wants, I was working on a design I’ve been dreaming up for a while now.  And then feeling guilty for not earnestly working away on The Gift.  And then not knitting at all, because avoidance is suddenly an effective coping mechanism in my world.  So today I’ll start making the actual gift and set aside the prototype design for a bit. 

We’ve also been hanging out with a good friend who is in town from California, which is great.  If anyone has figured out the whole teleportation thing, let me know.  Because I could sure use it.  Stupid continent–always in the way.  Scott and I get to catch up with some of our far-flung friends over the winter holidays, but it’s never enough.  Them and their free will, and the continent and its huge girth–none of it fair. 

And then there’s the not breathing so well.  Some kooky people–you may call them "doctors" where you come from–told me last year that I have asthma. 
"Yeah, right.  I don’t have asthma–that’s crazy."  I said in my head, even though I acted like I was being a good little patient.  I took the expensive medication that theoretically acted as an allergy med as well because I knew I had allergies, and my doc and I agreed that taking the nasty little pills was so much better than either being sick all the time or being a little less sick and getting rid of my puppy Kayo.  So it was the asthma I was denying.  I carried an inhaler I never needed to use and wished I could have more yarn with me instead.  I took the meds until my crappy insurance plan decided to triple my copay this month, pushing the cost up to almost $3 a pill, and I decided not to get a refill immediately and see if it was worth the extra money.  Because, you know, that’ll show ’em not to mess with me.  And I don’t have asthma, clearly, because I’ve only had that scary not-so-much-with-the-breathing experience a couple of times, and it hasn’t happened all year, so I don’t have asthma.   (I know, I know, I’m smarter than that.  Except when I’m a dumbass with a bone to pick.  Like now.) 

So this weekend I guess the residual meds finally left my body, because now I’m breathing out without intending to and not so good at the lung-filling, and I’m not singing as well as usual.  Don’t worry–I have an inhaler with me and am in no physical danger.  But I now know what a "yellow" asthma day feels like, and that asthma must really suck if you’re a kid.  I got pigheaded and made myself uncomfortable for no good reason.  I’ve ordered a refill and I’m switching insurance plans, and the sweet elixir will be in my bloodstream within a few hours.  Because the one thing I hate more than my insurance company right now is using my inhaler.  I would kick my ass for being so dumb, but I’d just get winded. 

Psych 101 says Crazy Lanea is attempting to control things in her immediate reach because she can’t control something external. 

I figured I should provide a bit of background on the poet I’ve chosen, since her work is only recently receiving attention in Lit departments in North America. Ní Dhomhnaill is multi-lingual, but writes poetry exclusively in Irish. She then divvies her work up among some of the finest poets in Ireland for translation into English: her list of translators alone should be proof enough of her brilliance.

To me, the only sad thing about this exercise is that I can’t get the sound of the original Irish to you. Her language is gorgeous, but the average English speaker won’t see that on the page because Irish spelling is so hard for most of us to penetrate. If you want to hear the sound of the original, well, either phone calls or .wav files are in our future. For some reason, Ní Dhomhnaill’s readings aren’t available on CD or tape. My guess is that we’ll have to wait for either tragedy or a major award for her to receive the wide-spread acclaim she deserves—fingers crossed for the latter. I do read Irish, but I’m not fluent by any stretch of the imagination. As we go through the book, I’ll read the both the poet’s original and the English translations and I’ll let you know if there are any particularly interesting or perplexing choices a translator made. I’ve also got a strong academic background in Irish literature, mythology, and history, so I’d be happy to answer any questions about allusions you run across as you read.

And a disclaimer: I am a zealot when it comes to Ní Dhomhnaill’s poetry.  I focused on her work in my grad program; I interviewed her and wrote a bio on her for a museum I worked on when I was an intern at the Dáil; I give her books to any of my friends who show the slightest bit of interest in poetry in Irish; I shill for her as if I were her agent.  Tell me if I start to drive you nuts.

Now the facts:
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire in 1952 to Irish parents. She grew up both in Lancashire and in the Dingle gaeltacht (Irish-speaking region) in County Kerry. Her father was bilingual and encouraged her to learn Irish from a young age, something she openly admits to doing to please him. Ní Dhomhnaill spent much of her youth in a boarding school in Lancashire, and it was there she began writing extensively in Irish. She initially chose Irish so that it would be harder for her teachers and classmates to read her diary, but ended up developing a true facility for the language. She describes herself as a muse poet, and explains that her personal poetic Muses only work in Irish.

Ní Dhomhnaill attended University College Cork from 1969-1973, which was a pivotal period in the Irish arts scene. At the time, composer Seán Ó’Riada was leading a movement to revivify traditional Irish music and song. Ó’Riada’s influence reached the literature department, and formed strong bonds between Cork’s writers and musicians. Along with several of her classmates, Ní Dhomhnaill began publishing her work in an avant garde poetry journal called Innti (Irish for Today). The Innti poets remain the vanguard of contemporary Irish poetry, and have retained their dedication to promoting the Irish Language and traditional culture, while injecting a theoretically “dead language” and its sister arts with contemporary ideas. Innti’s editor, Michael Davitt, died prematurely this summer.  In our own greusome way, we in the literary community will now begin to sing the praises of something we should have been celebrating for more than 30 years.  If nothing else, you’ll be ahead of the pack by next month.

Ní Dhomhnaill is married to the Turkish Geologist Dogan Leflef, and they have four children. Her family’s permanent residence is in Dublin, but Ní Dhomhnaill spends a fair amount of time outside of Ireland as an artist in residence at university lit departments in North America and the UK and with her husband’s family in Turkey.

Personally, I think Ní Dhomhnaill’s best poetry grows out of her focus on mythology and her experiences as a lover and mother. Her choice to write in Irish is controversial, and she has had to defend it repeatedly. The most insulting attack I’ve run across is an accusation that Ní Dhomhnaill is really just a muse for Heaney, Muldoon, Durcan, and her other translators. It’s a ridiculous claim, but one that seems to reveal some of the innate sexism that continues to pervade Irish literary criticism. But that’s enough from me: here’s Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill explaining her own work:

“The Gaeltacht language I grew up with fell out of history before the Enlightenment, and before many other things, including Victorian prudishness; and the language just isn’t prudish. The language is very open and non-judgemental about the body and its orifices. Devout Catholics can have a very racy speech that easily becomes vulgar when translated in English but is just nádúr, natural, in Irish.”

“I think it is downright pernicious to underestimate myth; it’s like pretending the unconscious does not exist, and that we are just composed of rationality. Myth is a basic, fundamental structuring of our reality, a narrative that we place on the chaos of sensation to make sense of our lives. The myth of the end of myth-making is the worst myth of all; it means that the unconscious has been finally cut off and is irretrievable.”

A good interview: Fortnight.

A good article on Contemporary Irish Poetry that touches on Innti: Dorgan.

Pardon me. Are you using this soapbox? Mind if I borrow it? Thanks.

All y’all may not know this, but I have a bit of a twang. It’s subtle most of the time, and it’s mixed with some weird bits of Pittsburg-ese and Irish and British slang, but I have lived in the Old Dominion for most of my life, and it’s clear as a bell if you listen. And yet, here I am with a bit of a twang; a mixolydeon fiddle tune stuck in my head; “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy” on the tip of my tongue, ready for singing; Appalachian Studies courses and syllabi all stuffed in my brain; years of flatfoot, square, and clogging teaching and performing under my belt; a banjo, a mandolin, a fiddle, and a guitar all within easy reach; hundreds and hundreds of CDs and pages of sheet music. And still, I often have to force myself to say “I like Country music” without adding some kind of qualifier. I don’t add a qualifier to “I like rock/Irish/Swing/Punk/Klezmer . . .” Just “Country” is hard to say.

You know why it’s hard to say? It’s not because I’m ashamed of my family or of Appalachia or of my love of what is truly an American art form. It’s because I’m ashamed of Nashville. I don’t mean the place—I mean the music machine.
And I’m ashamed of Nashville because Nashville apparently hasn’t realized it should be ashamed of itself for refusing to support musical geniuses like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Old Crow Medicine Show and Uncle Tupelo and the Be Good Tanyas until someone with enough buying power (i.e. we alt-country, old-time, and bluegrass fans) twists their arms into doing it.
For ignoring geniuses like Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash until they’re in vogue again, and then trotting them or some facsimile of them out like performing monkeys and hoping we’ll forget when those geniuses were marginalized and maligned because they were doing something different.
Ashamed that looks rather than talent seem to be pre-requisites for music deals.
Ashamed that it took until 2005 to add Deford Bailey to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Ashamed that Jerry Douglas is the only recipient of a CMA award this year with real roots chops.
Ashamed that the Nashville machine continues to bleach the history of Country so folks forget that this music developed from the music of Cherokees and Shawnees and Creeks and Choctaws and Africans and Melungeons and immigrants who had accents and were poor and who sometimes supported communism, not just Anglo-Saxon whites who were respectably right-of-center and pious and straight and sober.
Ashamed that Nashville is ashamed of where Country came from and what it really is to those of us who really know it. It’s folk music, not bubblegum pop. It’s about struggle and poverty and war and depression, even if they think those things won’t sell as many records as treacle. Harumph.