Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (born 1942) is an Irish poet and academic. She was the Ireland Professor of Poetry (2016–19).

Biography

Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork in 1942, the daughter of Eilís Dillon and Professor Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. She was educated at University College Cork and the University of Oxford. She lived in Dublin with her late husband Macdara Woods; they have one son, Niall Woods. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and an emeritus professor of the School of English which she joined in 1966. Her broad academic interests (notably her specialism in Renaissance literature and her interest in translation) are reflected in her poetry. She retired from full-time teaching in 2011 and a selection of her poems are currently on the syllabus for the Leaving Certificate, the final state examination for secondary school students. Ní Chuilleanáin is a member of Aosdána. She is a founder of the literary magazine Cyphers, alongside Pearse Hutchinson, Macdara Woods and Leland Bardwell. She continues to edit the magazine. She has contributed several recitations of her poems, including 'Small' (written after the death of Pearse Hutchinson), to the Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Awards

Ní Chuilleanáin's first collection won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1973. In 2010 The Sun-fish was the winner of the Canadian-based International Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award. In 2016, she was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins.

Publications

Poetry collections

Ní Chuilleanáin publishes with the Gallery Press in Ireland and Wake Forest University Press in the United States.

Translations

In addition to the above, Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry is widely anthologised.

Selected academic writing

Exhibitions

Notes and references