Guest of ilb 2003
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in St. Helens in the English county of Lancashire in 1952. Her parents were Irish. As a writer she draws tremendous inspiration from the culture of her ancestors, which she got to know at age 5 when the family moved to Dingle Gaeltacht in the Irish county of Kerry – one of the few places in Ireland, where Gaelic is still spoken today. From 1969 to 1973 she studied English and Irish at the University College in Cork. She lived in the Netherlands and in Turkey for a few years with her husband, the Turkish geologist Dogan Leflef, before moving to Dublin in the early 80s. Since 2001 the poet, who also teaches on the side, has held Ireland’s renowned Chair of Poetry.
Ní Dhomhnaill wrote her first poems in English; two early poems were published in a school newspaper. She soon realized that the English Language did not suit her Irish poetry. She started to translate her poems into Irish and quickly won an award in a literature competition held by the 'Irish Times'. “I had chosen my language, or more rightly, perhaps, at some very deep level, the language had chosen me” is what Ní Dhomhnaill writes about how she found herself as a writer. Her own country is critical of her decision to write poetry in a language, which even in Ireland is only spoken by a third of the population. In her essays, the poet always writes about the mythical power of this traditional language. She feels that the linguistic inheritance of her people carries a connection to the natural, rural Ireland of the past. In her verse, the fairytale-like and mythological figures of this past are confronted with the problems of modern everyday life, problems which are frequently tinged with feminism. The proximity to the earth, which forges the poetic link to today’s world, also finds expression in Dhomhnaill’s poetic language, which far from using flowery metaphors works with simple images borrowed from nature.
In addition to books of poetry and essays, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill has also written screenplays and theater pieces for children and has distinguished herself as a translator and editor of Irish verse. That her decision to focus on what is traditionally Irish did not harm her career can be seen in the international interest that her work has received: her books of poetry have received many awards and have been translated into many languages.
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