EilŽan N’ Chuillean‡in

"EilŽan N’ Chuillean‡in is the most important woman poet writing in Ireland today," said Guinn Batten, Ph.D., associate professor of English in Arts & Sciences. "As one scholar has recently noted, more than perhaps any other Irish writer she is at once familiar with what has been called 'the hidden Ireland,' with its links to Gaelic language, history and culture, and also with European culture at its most cosmopolitan.

"Where Eavan Boland, a much better-known Irish poet, claims to speak as a 'subject' for the women who have been made into 'objects' of poems by Irish males, N’ Chuillean‡in prefers to let those silenced by history as well as by art emerge as surreal but vivid presences," Batten added. "Her poetry of half-secrets, half-revelations, is scrupulous in its control of voice but also continuously startling."

N’ Chuillean‡in was born in Cork in 1942, the daughter of a novelist and a college professor. She graduated from University College Cork in 1962, later studied at Oxford University and currently teaches at Trinity College in Dublin, where she founded and co-edits the literary journal Cyphers with husband MacDara Woods.

Reading Series Who: Irish poet EilŽan N’ Chuillean‡in Where: Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall When: 8 p.m Feb. 7 Admission: Free and open to the public

N’ Chuillean‡in's latest collection is The Girl Who Married the Reindeer, published in January by Wake Forest University Press. Previous books include The Brazen Serpent (1995); The Magdalene Sermon and Earlier Poems (1989), named one of the three best poetry books of the year by The Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Book Prize Committee; The Rose Geranium (1981); Site of Ambush (1975); and Acts and Monuments (1966), winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

Recently, several of her works were anthologized in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000.