Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, one of Ireland's foremost women poets writing in Irish, was born in 1952 in Lacashire. In 1957, her family returned to Ireland, in the Dingle Gaeltacht in Kerry, where Nuala grew up. She graduated from the University College Cork and then moved to Holland with her husband. After a few years in Holland, she and her family moved to Turkey and spend several years there. Eventually, she returned to Ireland, where she has lived since 1980, and is currently living in Dublin with her husband and four children. Over the years, Nuala has gained prestige and recognition for her works which focused on Irish folklore, myth, and culture. She has won numerous international awards for works which have been translated into French, German, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Estonian, Japanese, and English. In 1991, she received The American Ireland Fund Literary Award which rewards writers for their efforts in their fields. Her works include Astrakhan Cloak, Pharaoh's Daughter, Selected Poems, and Spionain is Roiseanna. Nuala has the distinction of being one of the few women Irish poets who writes exclusively in Irish and has been praised for her efforts to revitalize the Irish language in modern poetry.
Nuala chose to write in Irish, and thereby encountering criticism from her countrymen, colleagues and family, because of her personal desire to keep the Irish culture alive by exposing her countrymen to its linguistic heritage. She feels that Irish is a language of beauty, historical significance, ancient roots and an immense propensity for poetic expression through its everyday use:
Irish is a language of enormous elasticity and emotional sensitivity; of quick and hilarious
banter and a welter of references both historical and mythological; it is an instrument of
imaginative depth and scope, which has been tempered by the community for generations
until it can pick up and sing out every hint of emotional modulation that can occur
between people. Many international scholars rhapsodize that this speech of ragged
peasants seems always on the point of bursting into poetry. (Dhomhnaill, 2)
Nuala states that she "had chosen [her] language, or more rightly, perhaps, at some very deep
level, the language had chosen [her]." (Dhomhnaill, 2) Her strong connection to Irish stems from
her childhood exposure to the language from her parents and her aunt. She attributes her
exposure to the language with her "farming off" to her aunt in Kerry, who became her surrogate
mother, and her desire to earn her father's love:
My father's father was from West Kerry, and he was brought up in an Irish-speaking
household in Cork and loved the language. I saw on their first visit to me in Kerry how
disappointed he was that I wasn't speaking Irish, and part of the reason I fell in love with
the language was that I saw it as a way to his heart. (O' Connor, 587)
As a child, Nuala, when living with her parents, lived in an Irish household, but not necessarily in an Irish-speaking household. Once she moved from her home of Sutton Manor Coalfield in Lancashire, she became engulfed in another aspect of her rich Irish heritage. In high school, she began writing poems in English and had two of her poems, one of Bobby Kennedy and the other on Martin Luther King, published in the school magazine. She feels it was at this time that she realized that writing in English seemed inappropriate and unnatural to her, "stupid" to quote Nuala (Dhomhnaill, 2). She then switched languages mid-poem and rewrote the same poem in Irish. Nuala sent the poem to an Irish Times competition and won a prize. She had found her inspiration and purpose.
The Irish language "is the oldest continuous literary activity in Western Europe" says Nuala, who finds she must justify her dedication to what some scholars consider a dead language. She mocks this classification of Irish by asking; if Irish is dead, "what does that make her?. . . A walking ghost? A linguistic specter?" (Dhomhnaill, 3) She sings the praises of the Irish language traditions and nuances that make it unique and therefore indispensable as a poetic medium:
The Gaeltacht language I grew up with fell out of history before the Enlightenment, and
before many other things, including Victorian prudishness; and the language just isn't
prudish. The language is very open and non-judgemental about the body and its orifices.
Devout Catholics can have a very racy speech that easily becomes vulgar when translated
in English but is just nádúr, natural, in Irish. (O' Connor, 603)
Nuala's obvious love affair with Irish is expressed countless times in her letters, writings, and
interviews. This is understandably so largely in part to her criticism for writing in Irish. She
quotes her mother as saying her writing in Irish was "mad" and countless other Irish people who,
because of their ignorance and condescending attitudes toward Irish, force Nuala to defend her
use of her native language: "Here I was in my own country, having to defend the official language
of the state from a compatriot who obviously thought it was an accomplishment to be ignorant of
it." (Dhomhnaill, 1) She clarifies that her dedication to the language is intensified by "the deep
sense in the language that something exists beyond the ego-envelope pleasant and reassuring, but
it is also a great source of linguistic and imaginative playfulness." (Dhomhnaill, 5) She refers to
the otherworld of fairies, sprites and merfolk, the influence of which is deeply ingrained in the
everyday life of Irish speakers. Nuala attempts to answer her critics queries into her seemingly
mad dedication to writing in English in her poem, "The Language Issue" which she presents as
the best answer for her decision:
The Language Issue
I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant
in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,
then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and the bulrushes by the edge
of a river
only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh's daughter.(Translated by Paul Muldoon; Dhomhnaill, 8)
Nuala's writings tend to focus on the rich traditions and heritage of Ireland. Poems about myths, folklore, women's feminine strength or logos, and strong affinities to the land are quintessential themes. Her poetry is subtle, unassuming, and free of metaphors, which she believes are static and in which it is difficult to exercise one's poetic expression. Her literary upbringing was peppered with exposure to classic Greek and Roman myths, of which she still writes. Her myth poems express an alternative reality which is as much a part of our world as it is alien. She speaks of her reasons for writing about myths as those that are an integral part of the Irish language and Irish culture and therefore must not be ignored:
I think it is downright pernicious to underestimate myth; it's like pretending the
unconscious does not exist, and that we are just composed of rationality. Myth is a basic,
fundamental structuring of our reality, a narrative that we place on the chaos of sensation
to make sense of our lives. The myth of the end of myth-making is the worst myth of all;
it means that the unconscious has been finally cut off and is irretrievable. (O' Connor, 604)
Her poem "Daphne and Apollo" speaks of the heated and violent tryst between Daphne and Apollo. It suggests sensual and sexual undertones bespeaking of strong earth-ties while expressing Nuala's sympathy towards the young girl. She offers an alternative, in an ironic tone, which suggests a bitter realization of traditional male domination over the female existence and energy, or logos:
Daphne and Apollo
When the arch-poet made a play for you,
like a bloodhound nosing a hareless scent,
your race from him froze in a skater's pirouette,
a music-box arrabesque, a twig that bent.The veins of your foot spread out into the clay,
a lacy skin coated your breasts, leaves
flowed in the branches of your hair, a wooden
torso sucked in your arms and legs;your mortal soul floated where the tree shone.
The immortal traced even the grain of your timber,
sensing your frightened pulse in the warm boughs,
kissing each as if it were one of our wrists;
the laurel hands that joined to crown
triumphant heads celebrated his passion . . . .But just say, for the laugh, you had played
along; that the door-leaves of your heart
had jammed wide open, instead of their floodgates
locking against that epiphanic assault--
what would have been the result?He wasn't the liver-tearing, date-rape type,
but the sun-god pouring inspiration-grace,
displaying himself at such a morning peak,
he would rouse the wind that moved over
the face of the deep. When this harpist
tautens his strings, the water snake
stands to attention; at this dawn
chorus, silence spills like a swan.(Translated by Medbh McGuckian)
Nuala enjoys writing of Irish folklore, of stories centuries old that continue to persist in the psyche of Irish peasants and writers. She feels that certain folk stories inspire an emotion and a reaction that could not be replicated today in the recycled, watered-down versions of the same story. Nuala recalls a folklore story that came to mind as she wrote a poem, which is partially recited, of a beautiful nature scene:
'In the tepid, damp clay there is a motionless seed/ You'd swear the
whole world is holding its breath. In the meantime/ a last splink of
light falls from the top to the bottom of the hills/ just as a yawn passes
from one person to the next.' That's actually a folklore theme, a story
about a man who caught his wife yawning when somebody else was yawning and
took it as a sign that they were lovers. So he took her off to the lake
to drown her, and then he yawned and she yawned and it broke the spell. I
saw a light passing over the hills at Annaghmakerrig, and I was reminded
of the infectiousness and spontaneity in that story. (O' Connor, 602)
Nuala's sensitivity to the importance of Irish folklore to the culture of today's Ireland is evident in her expression of an ancient Celtic folktale, "The Marianne Faithfull Hairdo:"
The Marianne Faithfull HairdoHaving washed their hands of water forever,
they can no longer even have a shower.They scour the household vessels
with a Fairy Liquid purée of ash and urine,
plus a grain of sand thrown in,
and use so much elbow-grease,
you'd have to give it to them,
they finish up like the TV ads.They exfoliate with oils in attar of rose
and scrub their scalps with a man-made
dry shampoo supplied by Boots,
or ordinary talc.The few-and-far between times
that they wet a hair of their heads,
it's with lukewarm tap water.
Which must be applied before sundown
for the following very good reason:A while back a local woman
was threshing flax with two girl-helpers,
and would only allow them to wash their hair
when the evening shift was over.
The work went on till late in the night,
and since there was no sign of a break,
one fo the girls put a flake of ash in her mouth,
the other a pinch of the chaff.
Around midnight there came a knock to the door,
and a voice cried: "Away to hell
with the belly of ash! But spare
the belly of chaff--and straight out the door
with the belly that's empty!"The woman of the house and the ash-girl
turned into thin air,
leaving the girl of chaff
to tell the tale:which has been handed down from that day
to this, to put the heart across
the breasts of the teenage mermaids.
(Translated by Medbh McGuckian)
Nuala speaks of the female logos, or the female energy in several of her poems. She
celebrates the strength of a woman in her pregnancy and the repression a woman experiences even
in today's society. She likens her logos to her poetic inspiration and links it to her powerful
images and touching sensitivity. In "The Mermaid in the Labour Ward," Nuala combines her
folklore and myth tradition with her expression of strong female logos in her description of labor:
The Mermaid in the Labour Ward Something stirred in her not the swishing meteor of her fin,
but in the pit of the bed,
a body-long split of ice,
languid as dulse tentacles,
flaccid as fishbait."Lord Bless Us, isn't this a hoot--
some kind of Night of the Long Knives--
half a staff as pissed as a newt,
and the rest of them you couldn't trust
as far as you could throw them.
I've had it up to here."
And she upped and yanked the sea-legs
out the door.The crunch came
when she found herself
head over heels in their wake:
were these creatures joined to her,
or was she hinged on to them?
It took the nurse
to give her the low-down
and put her in the picture:
"What you have there, dear,
is called a leg,
and another one to boot.
First leg,
second leg,
left, right,
one goes in front of the other."
It's little wonder
in the long months that followed,
as her instep flattened
and her arches dropped,
if her mind went with them.
(Translated by Medbh McGuckian)
Nuala has a simple style which mirrors the simplicity of nature. However, much like nature, to contemplate the secrets help within one of Nuala's poems is to discover a world of complexities, interwoven into a fine canopy of meaning. She speaks of simple subjects, the water on the shore, a fish leaping in darkness, and her relationship to the fish. Nuala expresses a deep connection to her environment, possibly a desire to link her existence to that of energy of Ireland. She accomplishes her connection in her poem "The Shannon Estuary Welcomes the Fish," in which she revels in the fish's sleek beauty and basic form:
The Shannon Estuary Welcomes the Fish The salmon's leap
In the darkness--
Bare blade
Silver shield;
And me welcoming, net-
Draped and slippery
Full of seaweed
Of quiet eddies
Of eel-tails.All meat
Is this fish
Almost nothing of bone
Less of entrail
Twenty packed pounds
Of tensed muscle
Straining
Towards its nest among the neat mosses.And I sing a lullaby
To my darling
Wave on wave
Verse after verse,
My phosperescence a sheet beneath him
My chosen one, drawn from afar.
Nuala fights a constant battle against critics who scorn her efforts to keep the Irish language alive and functional. She struggles to maintain the Irish language purity in her works in light of political and social events. She scoffs, in turn, people who are proud to show their ignorance of the Irish language, who doubt the origins of ancient folk stories and who consider Irish a dead language. Nuala fears, in a sense, the continuance of that ignorance,which could eliminate the already meager percentage of Irish speakers in Ireland. She does express hope, however, in her findings that recently there have been an increase in the percentage of persons who understand and/or speak Irish. She appeals to those who are not fluent to embrace their heritage and their language which is poetic in of itself. She will continue to write in Irish; she does not expect a cultural awarenss revolution but rather a reflection and regenerating appreciation of the lyrical Gaeltacht tongue. In her poem, "The Merfolk and the Written Word," Nuala possibly expresses her view of Ireland and its deteriorated spoken language tradition:
The Merfolk and the Written Word Although they were literate in their own fish-tongue
from the day and hour they landed,
and composition was taught to their offspring
until the Island School was closed down
by the Department of Dried-Out Islands
back in the '50s (so the story went,
for fear of avalanches),they never took to the pen
or cultivated the native prose text:
they didn't invent yarns and fiction,
donning the writer's hat.
They disdained the freaks of printing
and never capitalised
on the fabulous, enchanted existence
that had been theirs."Submarine Cookery," "The Spellboung Isle,"
"Ancient Tales of Davy Jones's Locker,"
"A Sea-Nymph Bares All"
are some of their unBookered Prizes.Of course they regret their Fall,
and many hanker after paradise,
but they don't go overboard,
for they know fine well
it's a one-way street.
And though they are a dying breed,
little and large, they don't go on
making a song and dance about it
in chapter and verse:they leave that fine distinction
to the inhabitants of the Blaskets.
(Translated by Medbh McGuckian)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dhomhnaill, Nuala Ni. "Selected Poems." Southern Review. Volume 31. Summer 1995. Baton Rouge, LA. pp. 432-443, 480.
Dhomhnaill Nuala Ni. "Why I Chose to Write in Irish: The Corpse That Sits Up and Talks Back." The New York Times, 8 January 1995: n. pag. Online. Internet. 2 April 1997. Available