Eilean ni chuilleanain biography sample answers

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Ní Chuilleanáin’s narrative poetry explores themes of our relationship with religion, death and love, which are very relevant to contemporary Ireland, through a beautiful, mysterious and sometimes allusive style.

The poet blends the past and present in her poetry, which contains layers of hidden meaning, which are revealed through her allusions to folklore and mythology, as well as her philosophical focus on art, music, architecture and religion.

Critic Stephen Burt described Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry as being ‘drawn to visionary experience yet alert to domestic and urban detail.’ In poems such as ‘Street’, ‘Fireman’s Lift’, ‘Translation’ and ‘To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009’ (To Niall Woods…) Ní Chuilleanáin tells stories that have relevance to the modern Irish reader and she tells those stories using i