Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's Selected Poems gathers poems from six
collections of poetry, from Acts and Monuments (1972) to The Girl Who
Married the Reindeer (2001), and proves that she is one of the major
poets in Ireland. While her numerous images of mythical figures,
travelers, pilgrims, and women--especially of the veiled subject of the
nun--remind us of our deepest inner sanctum, with its litany of
spiritual truths, human fears and needs, these images also catalogue the
importance of the ordinary and the domestic as new metaphors for human
experiences and emotions. Ní Chuilleanáin allows those who have been
silenced in history to surface in art as surreal but living presences.