Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (above) was appointed to the Ireland Chair of Poetry yesterday. She succeeds the inaugural professor, John Montague, who has held the position since 1988, when the chair was established by the arts councils North and South, in partnership with TCD, UCD and QUB. Ni Dhomhnaill will hold the position for three years, attached to each university in succession. She will deliver three formal presentations and hold informal workshops and readings.
One of the best known of contemporary Irish-language poets, Ni Dhomhnaill (49) has an international reputation and her work has been widely translated in Europe. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon have translated her poetry into English, in bilingual editions. Her collections include Fear Suaithinseach, Feis, Pharaoh's Daughter, The Astrakhan Cloak and Cead Aighnis.
She has also written plays for children, a screenplay, An Goban Saor, and the script for a lyrical, semi-autobiographical RTE documentary, An t-Anam Mothala (The Feeling Soul), which encapsulated her artistic credo. It evoked her journeys between the Kerry Gaeltacht in the Dingle peninsula, where she spent part of her childhood, and the parched promontories of Capadocia, Turkey, where she lived for some years with her Turkish husband. Her script linked the rich folkloric heritage of the two places, which poetry had the power to recreate. "I think poetry springs from a level below meaning; it is a molecular thing, a pattern of sound and image."
For her, the Irish language is the gateway to "an saol eile" or "an tir faoi thonn" - another world of the imagination and the psyche. Her answer to why she writes in Irish is given in what is perhaps her most famous poem, Ceist na Teangan:
Cuirim mo dhochas ar snamh
i mbaidin teangan
faoi mar a leagfa naionan
i gcliabhan
a bheath fite fuaite
de dhuilleoga feileastraim ...
I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put an infant
in a basket of intertwined iris leaves ...
From Pharaoh's Daughter, published by Gallery Press
Finding a bed in Venice in the summer is always a challenge, heightened this year by an American millionaire who has apparently booked up half the city's hotels for his daughter's wedding. Once over that hurdle, however, delight is guaranteed in La Serenissima, and the good news is that entrance to the 49th International Exhibition of Art, La Biennale di Venezia, is free. Dublin-born Grace Weir (37) and Belfast-born Siobhan Hapaska (38) are the two artists representing Ireland at this year's event, which is intended to be "a stage of mankind", a site of continuity. Weir presents a dual-screen projection, depicting a circle of cloud from two perspectives. Hapaska uses sound and photography and film to explore the relationship between nature and technology. The biennale is open from June 10th to November 4th, Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
The Arts Council has extended the deadline for submissions to its review of the current arts plan (1999-2001) to June 18th. Although the council sent out its request for feedback six weeks ago, with a deadline of May 18th, the letters sat in the recesses of An Post headquarters and were not delivered until yesterday. Submissions may be e-mailed to evaluation@artscouncil.ie, which, under the circumstances, might be the safest bet.
The Longford dancer and choreographer Marguerite Conlan has become director and chief choreographer at the Saarbrucken Staatstheater, writes Carolyn Swift. She will also be choreographing for international companies, including the Stuttgart Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, the Chicago Hubbard Street Dance Company and the Vienna State Ballet. She will have 18 dancers in her company at the Saarbrucken, and has travelled a long way since she began her dance training with Anica Louw at the Shawbrook School of Ballet in Legan, Co Longford. Her choreography has been seen all too rarely since she joined London Festival Ballet and went on to become a soloist with the Berlin Deutsche Oper. It was seen here last year at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, performed by the Swiss Cathy Sharpe Dance Theatre.
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