Ní Chonchúir is one of a younger generation of Irish poets who look more to Europe for influences than to Britain, whether those influences are absorbed directly or through an older Irish conduit such as Gerry Murphy.
The poet was born in Dublin in 1970 and currently lives in Galway. She has a Masters in Translation from Dublin City University and is a graduate of Early and Modern Irish from Trinity College, Dublin. She has worked variously as a translator, bookseller, arts administrator and librarian. She has won many awards for both her poetry and fiction and has served as judge for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has published two short story collections, contributed to many poetry anthologies and published her first solo poetry collection Tattoo: Tatú in 2007, from which the poems here are taken.
Ní Chonchúir writes in both Irish and English. Not since Michael Hartnett has there been an Irish poet who works with such facility in both languages. She has also translated from Irish the poems of the late Caithlín Maude.
Of the poems in Tattoo: Tatú she writes:
“These poems are what I would call ‘versions’ of each other. It is impossible to literally translate a poem and still find a poem in the translation with sense and meaning intact. So I have transposed these poems into English (or Irish) as a version of the original, and hopefully, in the process, have come up with a new poem.”
Bibliography
Poetry
Molly’s Daughter (a section in the trio anthology DIVAS!), Arlen House, Galway, 2003
Tattoo: Tatú, Arlen House, Galway, 2007
Fiction
The Wind Across the Grass, Arlen House, Galway, 2004
To the World of Men, Welcome, Arlen House, Galway, 2005
Links
http://www.nualanichonchuir.com/home.html official homepage on which there are many more links.
