Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin wins the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry 2010
ILE extends warmest congratulations to the Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, who was named the International winner of the tenth annual Griffin Poetry Prize.
Eiléan, who is a former chairperson of ILE, has won the prestigious award worth $65,000 (€49,000) for her most recent collection of poetry, The Sun-fish (published by The Gallery Press, 2009). Judges for the award were Anne Carson (Canada), Kathleen Jamie (Scotland) and Carl Phillips (United States). They described Eiléan as a 'beguiling poet' who 'opens many doors onto multiple worlds'.
The effect of her impressionistic style is like watching a photograph as it develops. The Sun-fish contains approaches to family and political history, thwarted pilgrimages in which Ní Chuilleanáin poses many questions – not always directly – and often chooses to leave the questions themselves unresolved, allowing them to resonate meaningfully past the actual poem's end. These are potent poems, with dense, captivating sound and a certain magic that proves not only to be believable but necessary, in fact, to our understanding of the world around us.
The Griffin Poetry Prize was founded in 2000 to serve and encourage excellence in poetry. The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English, and submitted from anywhere in the world.
ILE has recently funded the translations of Eiléan's poetry into Estonian, Hungarian and Italian.