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Lies is a selection of Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Irish language poems, with facing English translations by the poet herself
When does a poem tell the truth? When is it a lie? In Lies, intimate moments carefully re-appraised (first dates, break ups, young parenthood, etc.) are the raw material of these vivid and wholly engaging poems, written in Irish, and translated here by the author – a process that itself raises questions about poetry and truth.
But a great deal of the power of Ní Ghríofa’s work comes from the way her personal history links her to the wider world – to the imaginative encounters that prompt so many of the poems, to an acute awareness of the restless nature of language itself, and not least to the women who preceded her and who remain a steadying and guiding presence throughout.
“[Ní Ghríofa] achieves the feat of making us look again at the usual and illuminating its pulsating strangeness. She is a brilliant addition to the distinguished succession of bilingual poets writing in Irish and English.”
– Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Ireland Professor of Poetry
About the Author
Doireann Ní Ghríofa (born Galway, 1981) is an award-winning bilingual writer, whose poems and prose essays have appeared in many Irish and international journals. She has published six books of poetry; her collections with Dedalus Press are Clasp (2015) and Lies (2018), a bilingual volume featuring her own English translations and original Irish language poems (first published in individual collections by Coiscéim). Her most recent prose publication is the bestseller A Ghost in the Throat (Tramp Press, 2020) which finds the eighteenth-century poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill haunting the life of a contemporary young mother, prompting her to turn literary detective. Awards for Ní Ghríofa’s writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship (Queen’s University), and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others. "There is a fearlessness in Ní Ghríofa’s work: in the subjects she turns her keen gaze on, but also in the very music she lets play in the lines. A deep intelligence informs the strategies and approaches in the poems, and a generosity of spirit and openheartedness are signal qualities" — Paula Meehan, Ireland Professor of Poetry
