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Title:
This poem was written after the death of Ni Chuilleanain's sister in 1990. The poet remembers one day when her sister was ill but was still moving around in her dressing gown. She had looked at her and thought that there is a space that is going to be empty, and so it proved.
The poem is set and written in Italy. Her sister loved Italy and they bought a house there, but she became too ill to travel and never got to fully enjoy it. The episode of Ni Chuilleanain's son feeling sick in the car happened a couple of years after her sister's death. It reminded her of time passing and of empty spaces left behind.
'I write poems that mean a lot to me' ENC
Niall Woods is Ní Chuilleanáin’s son and Xenya Ostrovskaia was the woman he married in September 2009. Ní Chuilleanáin wrote the poem to commemorate their wedding and give her blessing to their marriage.
In the poem she references many different folk tales both Irish and Russian and also the Book of Ruth from the Bible. These stories all deal with people starting out on adventurous journeys and, to varying degrees, feature ‘happily ever after’ endings. The poet’s message is that one has to take risks and persevere to earn the good things in life, especially love.
Title:
A ‘Killer instinct’ is ‘a ruthless determination to succeed or win’. Both the hare and the poet’s father exhibit this instinct as they escape their hunters whereas the dogs and soldiers, who let their prey go, do not. The poet too, in fleeing her father’s deathbed, seemed to lack the courage to endure her own fear at such a moment.
Stanza by Stanza:
The poem opens with the image of a hare ‘sitting still’ in the middle of the path on which the poet was walking, a memory from a few years previously. She had ‘fled’ the hospital in which her father was dying obviously struggling with the ordeal of seeing him waste away.
She was reminded of this memory by a striking photograph of hare coursing in the morning newspaper:
Two greyhounds tumbling over, absurdly gross,
While the hare shoots off to the left, her bright eye
Full not only of speed and fear
But surely in the moment a glad power,
She sees fear in the eye of the hare but also the thrill of survival, ‘glad power’ in her ability to outrun the ‘stupid dogs’. This sparks the memory of her nineteen year old father being chased by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence in 1921 and how, like the hare, he gave them the slip:
And he was clever, he saw a house
And risked an open kitchen door
“A poem communicates without being understood.” - T.S. Eliot
1. The poem tells a story. In a short paragraph, outline what happens.
2. The poem has a rich cinematic quality. In your opinion, how is the atmosphere of the poem created?
3. Why do you think she chose to name the poem 'Street' and yet gives the street no name? Give reasons for your response.
4. Were you satisfied by the poem's conclusion? Briefly explain your response.
About the incident he commented ‘never/Such gladness’ as ‘he came out/ Into a blissful dawn’ the following morning. Both the hare and her father felt excitement and joy in surviving a near death experience.
The poet thinks that neither should ever ‘have been coursed’ as it should not have been necessary for a boy to fight for his country’s independence at such a young age and hare coursing is now regarded as a barbaric activity. She concludes the poem by admitting she ‘should not have run away’ from her father’s deathbed and remembers that she subsequently ‘went back to the city’ to face up to her own challenges.
In Brief:
Street is a short poem about love and attraction designed to leave the reader guessing. A man falls ‘in love with the butcher’s daughter’ as he sees her walk down the street and on one occasion he follows her home.
Women (around 30,000) who were admitted to the Magdalene institutions over a period of 150 years were known as the Magdalenes. They were incarcerated for a number of reasons including growing up in care, stealing, getting pregnant or even being considered too promiscuous. In 1999 an order of nuns sold part of their convent to a developer. When works commenced, the remains of 155 women were discovered. A huge public scandal followed which continues to this day. The bodies were exhumed and buried in Glasnevin. This poem was read at that service.
1. Describe in 5/10 lines what you think the poem is about.
2. Do you agree that there is a real sense of unrest among the souls in the grave? Explain your answer.
3. Is the score ever settled in the poem? Explain your thinking
4. Steam is a recurring motif in the poem. Explain when and why the poet uses it.
Literary Review
Piled high, wrapped lightly, like the one cumulus cloud
in a perfect sky, softly packed like the air,
Is all that went on in those years, the absences,
The faces never long absent from thought,
The bodies alive then and the airy space they took up
When we saw them wrapped and sealed by sickness
Guessing the piled weight of sleep
We knew they could not carry for long;
This is the place of their presence; in the tree, in the air.
This is the place where the child
Felt sick in the car and they pulled over
And waited in the shadow of a house.
A tall tree like a cat's tail waited too.
They opened the windows and breathed
Easily, while nothing moved. Then he was better.
Over twelve years it has become the place
Where you were sick one day on the way to the lake.
You are taller now than us.
The tree is taller, the house is quite covered in
With green creeper, and the bend
in the road is as silent as ever it was on that day.
To the poet this bend in the road is a place of memory for all these people and all her memories, not just the one in which her child got sick: ‘This is the place of their presence: in the tree, in the air.’
Eilean's mother was a children's author and this may help to account for the abundance of folklore in her writings. Religious themes also dominate her work.
'Ni Chuilleanain does many expert things in her poems but does them so quietly that often she remains unheard except by those who have returned many times to listen.'
This poem was written after the poet attended a prize-giving ceremony in the RDS. She was following a friend, searching for the material of his suit and this reminded her of following her late father, who always wore a suit and hat. When she got home, she looked at a print she had of Jack Yeats's 'A Fair Day.'. Both of these events inspired this poem. She seems to be trying to recapture memories of her late father.
The Bend in the Road is a poem about memory and nostalgia for the past. It recounts a tale of a child getting sick on a journey with the whole family and how the location, that ‘bend in the road’, becomes synonymous with that event.
The poet realizes that our surroundings are filled with the memories of our loved ones even if they have passed away.
She did her undergraduate degree in UCC and a Master of Arts in 1964. She attended Oxford and received a Bachelor of Letters in Elizabethan prose, concentrating on religious writing. She lectures in Trinity College.
She is the co-founder of a literary magazine known as "Cyphers."
She has won many poetry prizes for her works including the Lawrence O' Shannessy prize for poetry and the Griffin prize for her poetry collection titled "The Sun Fish". That same collection gained her a nomination for the T.S Elliot award as well.
She is a talented translator and is able to translate Irish, Italian, French and Romanian. She has also published several books about translation.
Language
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork in 1942. Her mother was an author of children's books and her father was a professor of Irish literature in University College Cork. Her mother ran the nursery in UCC so she spent a lot of time there and this appears to have been a factor in her having an appreciation for architecture, which she uses in many of her poems.
Because of the literature heavy environment she grew up in, she gained a passion for the literary world, especially poetry