The Map of the World - by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In The Map of the World, Eilé an Ní Chuilleaná in continues her vital work " to hold in view / history's patched lining, the sewing." Within this patchwork, there are pilgrimages to holy wells, bishops and bookbinders, and poems in conversation with writers and artists, from Andrew Marvell, Milton, and Joyce to Irish painter Nano Reid and stained-glass artist Helen Moloney. There are also deft translations, as Ní Chuilleaná in writes Shakespeare's Caliban into Irish alongside the Romanian poet Ileana Malancioiu. Other poems evoke a darker urgency of war, displacement, and ecological precarity. Yet, perhaps the most compelling moments are uncovered in the collection's intimate elegies, from " Muriel Gifford After Her Fever" to " The Ash-tree at My Window," in which there is " No need to make sense" of loss, only a sublime petition: " Please, / hide me in summer." In this volume, the first since her Collected Poems (2021), we find a poet writing " both from the uncharted depths of grief and at the height of her powers" (The Irish Times).