We are delighted to congratulate Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on her appointment as the new Ireland Professor of Poetry.
“This is a good thing for poetry.” — Peter Fallon
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin will be the seventh Ireland Professor of Poetry, taking over until October 2019 from the current holder, Paula Meehan, who finishes her term at the end of October.
The Ireland Chair of Poetry was set up in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Seamus Heaney, to honour his achievement and that of other Irish poets.
Ni Chuilleanáin has long been established as one of the leading Irish poets of her generation, and her appointment to the Ireland Chair of Poetry will be widely recognised as the fitting tribute to her achievement. Her sometimes elusive poems have an unmistakable beauty, elegance and grace that carries readers into their own special world of image and feeling. She moves at ease between Irish and European landscapes, between the material and the spiritual realms, unifying them by the force of her compelling imagination.
She has been an important advocate and spokesperson for poetry, both as an editor of the long-running journal, Cyphers, which she helped to found, and in her outreach activities such as the poetry workshops in schools and prisons which she has led with her husband, the poet Macdara Woods. With all these gifts, she will bring great authority and distinction to the Ireland Chair.
— The Irish Times
