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.

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