Caitríona Ní Chléirchín
Her mastery of Irish and sense of being at home in both tradition and modernity is evident throughout… The poems are full of passion and also quiet reflection on life and love and death.”
— Michael Hartnett Award citation
Caitríona Ní Chléirchín grew up in Gortmoney, Emyvale, in County Monaghan. She has published two collections in Irish, both from Coiscéim, Crithloinnir which won the Oireachtas Prize for New Writers in 2010 and An Bhrídeach Sí which was a joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2015. She is also a critic and an Irish Language and Literature lecturer in DCU.
The Talk of the Town
The judges of the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry in 2015 highlighted Caitríona Ní Chléirchín’s poetry as ‘powerful, courageous, sassy and important . . . Her mastery of Irish and sense of being at home in tradition and modernity is evident in poems set in the 17th century, poems framed by Gaelic mythology and in intensely personal lyrics. The poems are full of passion.’ Caitríona Ní Chléirchín’s romantic sensibility contrasts with the more urgent contemporary notes of the collection’s concluding series of outraged poems haunted by memories of border crossings near her home place. The Talk of the Town includes a generous and varied selection of her work with translations into English by Peter Fallon and offers evidence of a meeting of minds and common ground.
