Irish Poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill to Read at Smith College

The Poetry Center at Smith College will present Irish poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, March 12, in Neilson Library Browsing Room.

Born in England and reared in the Irish-speaking areas of West Kerry and in Tipperary, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is praised as one of the most gifted living poets in the Irish language tradition. All four of her collections of poems in Irish have won the Seán Ó Ríordáin Award.

A three-time winner of the Arts Council Prize for Poetry and recipient of the Butler Award from the Irish American Cultural Institution, Ní Dhomhnaill has been credited by The Times Literary Supplement for revitalizing the Irish language: "Shape-shifting, from Gaelic myth. . . to some less romantic or quirkier emblem of the present, is a constant resource of Ní Dhomhnaill's poetry; and it's one of the ways she has rescued the Irish language from its association with the pedantries of the past."

Her irreverent, exuberant poems are translated into English by such distinguished poets as Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon and Medbh McGuckian and are published in the United States in the following bilingual editions: "The Pharaoh's Daughter," "The Astrakhan Cloak" and "The Water Horse."

Ní Dhomhnaill has held the Burns Chair of Irish Studies at Boston College and is the contemporary poetry editor of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. One of her current projects is the translation from Turkish to Irish of a book-length poem by Nazim Hikmet. Ní Dhomhnaill, who lives in Dublin, spent several years in Turkey and returns there regularly with her Turkish husband and four children.

Ní Dhomhnaill's reading will be followed by a bookselling and signing. The event is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, call Cindy Furtek in the Poetry Center office at (413) 585-4891 or Ellen Doré Watson, director, at (413) 585-3368.

Contact: Marti Hobbes, mhobbes@smith.edu

February 27, 2001