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Here is Sunday’s early evening music & poetry programme ‘West Wind Blows’ with Eilé Ní Chuilleanáin. This programme is part of our Education Programmes. This week Eilé Ní Chuilleanáin. Broadcast Sunday the 31st Of March 2024 https://www.connemarafm.com/audio-page/
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Here is Sunday’s early evening music & poetry programme ‘West Wind Blows’ with Eilé Ní Chuilleanáin. This programme is part of our Education Programmes. This week Eilé Ní Chuilleanáin. Broadcast Sunday the 31st Of March 2024 https://www.connemarafm.com/audio-page/
Listen to West Wind Blows 31march2024 by Connemara Radio Archives MP3 song. West Wind Blows 31march2024 song from Connemara Radio Archives is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 01:16:36. This high-quality MP3 track has 64 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 5 Apr 2024. Stream and download West Wind Blows 31march2024 by Connemara Radio Archives for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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Connemara Holiday Lettings sponsors a series of programs on Connemara Community Radio aimed at Leaving Certificate students. The programs cover English, French, Classical Studies, Chemistry, and Physics. The series includes lectures on poets and Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The programs air on Sundays at 5.05pm and are repeated on Mondays at 12.05pm. They can also be listened to or downloaded on the radio's website. In the lecture, Dennis Craven discusses the themes in Eileen Ní Chuillinan's poetry, including nature, duty, time, memory, marriage, and social issues. The lecture provides analysis and interpretation of several of Ní Chuillinan's poems, highlighting their themes and symbolism. One of the poems discussed is "Street," which explores themes of desire, violence, voyeurism, and the fascination with the incongruous. Another poem, "All For You," contrasts the natural and the unnatural, wealth and status, and the temptation to opt This program is sponsored by Connemara Holiday Lettings, your one-stop shop for all your holiday home rental needs 095 22669. Attention Leaving Certificate Higher Level English, French, Classical Studies, Chemistry and Physics students. As part of our commitment to education, Connemara Community Radio is now broadcasting, within the West Wind Blows, a series of 14 programs including English, French, Classical Studies, Chemistry and Physics directed towards Leaving Certificate students' higher level course. Leading English lecturers discuss all of the poets on the Leaving Certificate English syllabus and give tips on how to approach Paper 1, the essay paper. The series includes a lecture on themes, topics and characters in the Shakespearean play Hamlet, which is also on the Leaving Certificate syllabus. The series runs each Sunday at 5.05pm and is repeated on Monday at 12.05pm. These programs are available to listen to or download on a dedicated webpage on www.connemarafm.com. Hello and welcome. Today Dennis Craven will lecture on the poetry of Eileen Ní Chuillinan. In this talk I'm going to deal with the poetry of Eileen Ní Chuillinan and the first thing I will do is focus on her themes, concerns or issues, in other words, what themes she focuses on in her poetry. So we look first at a poem on lacking the killer instinct. There are a number of themes in that poem, escape to nature, finding calm, repose and tranquillity in nature and, coming from the title of the poem, the ruthless instinct for survival. There's a major theme in the poem and that is responding to the call of duty, in this case the poet's duty to her dying father. His death was imminent, another major theme, forgetting about self and focusing on others. The poem also focuses on the past and it deals with time and memory and duty. Looking at another of the poems on your course, to Niall Woods and Zainia, married in Dublin on the 9th of September 2009. And for the rest of the talk I'm not going to give all that big long title, I'll just call it To Niall Woods and Zainia, the Russian girl he married in 1909. He of course, Niall Woods, is Eileen Ní Chuillinan's son, she's married to the poet Mac Dara Woods. But what are the themes in this poem? First of all, a mother's wedding gift of wishes and blessings, that's what the poem is largely about. Not Newbridge cutlery or Warford Wedgwood, but a gift of wishes and blessings, conveyed of course, as you'll see later on, through the templates of fairy tale and myth. Another issue or theme in this poem of course is the past and the future, beautifully linked by fairy tale. This poem also deals with the merging of two cultures in marriage. Turning to the poem Street, the themes are, as I see it, voyeurism, violence, danger, fascination and obsession with the incongruous mix of female and male. Another poem, All For You. The themes, first of all, you have the theme of the natural, represented by the donkey and the manger, as opposed to the unnatural, represented by this strange, gothic house. The donkey is at home at the manger. The house, when you've read the poem, you will realise, could never really be a home. Another theme that I see in that poem is the temptation to opt for wealth and status. Wealth and status, beyond one's natural needs. You could call the theme natural needs, as opposed to wealth, status and a palatial mansion. Looking at two more poems briefly, as regards theme, and one is that magnificent, moving, emotional, brilliant poem, Translation, dealing with the reburial of the Magdalene women. And this poem focuses on exhumation, bodies being unburied, all those women who were buried in unmarked graves are now being exhumed and given a burial with dignity and respect. The poem deals with the past, the horrible secrets of the past being revealed. It deals with justice, at last, versus injustice in the past. It deals with the natural versus the unnatural and the cruel and the horrible. A major theme in this beautiful poem is remembering the wronged dead, and in that way, giving them the light of recognition. And the final poem I'm going to mention here is The Bend in the Road. And the theme here, I think, is, the theme is rather memory, the past, stasis. You might not have made that word in school, s-p-a-s-i-s. You know, something fixed or permanent. So a theme in this poem is stasis versus change. It also focuses very much on the passage of time and, to an extent, on death. The first poem I look at very briefly, and I will read it because it's short, Street. He fell in love with the butcher's daughter when he saw her passing by in her white trousers, dangling a knife on a ring at her belt. He stared at the dark shining drops on the paving stones. One day he followed her down the slanting lane at the back of the shambles. A door stood half open, and the stairs were brushed and clean. Her shoes paired on the bottom step, each tread marked with the red crescent her bare heels left, fading to faintest at the top. There is a whole mix of themes in this poem—desire, violence, voyeurism, mystery, fascination, obsession, fascination with the incongruous, the incongruous here, a girl dressed in a white trousers, suggesting style and elegance, and the female, and the very opposite, dangling a knife, which is dropping blood onto the pavement. So I think the poem is quite unhealthy. I think it's an unhealthy obsession with the incongruous mix of elegant female style and male violence symbolised by the blood and the knife dangling from her belt. The opening line, he fell in love with the butcher's daughter, does sound like the opening of a traditional romantic sonnet about love, but it's not about love. Everything changes in a moment. We are shown something quite incongruous, as I said, a combination of elegance represented by the girl in the white trousers, and violence represented by the image of a knife dangling on a ring at her belt. This girl slaughters animals and carries the symbol of her occupation in public. Remember the title of the poem is Street, a public place. This is an unusual occupation for a female, you will agree. He stared at the dark shining drops on the paving stones. Well, clearly, this is not love in any positive sense. It is some strange fascination with blood, violence, and the incongruous. It's worth focusing on the image of the dark shining drops of blood on the paving stones. That image of the dark shining drops, that rather than the girl as a female, is what attracts him. He stared at the dark shining drops on the paving stones. He sees a girder on the street, a public place, and becomes, and I'm repeating myself, fascinated by the incongruous combination of female elegance and male occupation, butchering, and violence, and blood. The white trousers suggesting purity and elegance and femininity, and the knife and the blood suggesting danger, violence, and masculinity. The title Street is significant, it's a public place. A place of appearances, of superficiality. He does not know this girl, and he's already fascinated by her. The emotional investment he has made in her has not been earned by getting to know her. It's not a love poem. It is a cheap form of interaction. A man sees a girl on the street, wearing white trousers and dangling a knife, which is dropping blood, which fascinates them. There's nothing worthwhile or positive in that, and of course, she doesn't know him at all. She doesn't even know that he has seen her. The opening line, he fell in love with her, does not mean that he fell in love with her. It's just a conventional expression. One day he followed her down the slanting lane at the back of the shambles. Shambles is an abattoir. The image of the slanting lane suggests something furtive, secret, inappropriate, and the inappropriateness is heightened by the fact that the girl is entirely unaware of his interest in her. This is voyeurism. In the second stanza we reach a boundary, a half-open door, the boundary between the public and the private. The half-open door allows the man, and us, a glimpse of the private domestic world. Up to now it was the public world of the street. Now he and we get a glimpse of the private domestic world, into which the man will have to venture, if he is to get to know this girl. The street is now shut out, and the domestic private female world is taking over. The stairs are brushed clean, suggesting female neatness and order. Her shoes are pared on the bottom step, again suggesting female order and domestic neatness, and the red crescent marks left by her heels are fading to faintest at the top. I think the image of the blood marks fading is significant. She seems to be shedding the image of the slaughterhouse. The female domestic seems to be replacing the abattoir image. It seems that the normal domestic female world is taking over. Will he venture in the door, or has his fascination ended as the poem ends? The poem ends in mystery. The half-open door marks the boundary between the public world and the private domestic world. Entering this domestic world could involve risk, danger. To reach this domestic world, he will perhaps have to follow a trail of blood. I'm going to look at another poem now, all for you. During this talk, I will not be reading all the poems through. Reading constraints will not permit that, but I will comment on the poems. However, I'll read this short poem all for you. Once beyond the gate of the strange stable-yard, we dismount. The donkey walks on, straight in at the wide door, and sticks his head in a manger. The great staircase of the hall slouches back, sprawling between warm wings. It is for you. As the steps wind and warp among the vaults, their thick ribs part. The doors of guardroom, chapel, storeroom swing wide, and the breadth of ovens flows out. The range of brushwood, the roots torn out and butchered. It is for you. The dry fragrance of tea-chests, the tins shining in ranks, the ten-pound jars rich with shriveled fruit. Where better to lie down and sleep along the label shelves with the key still in your pocket? A word on this poem. The title, All for You, suggests that it's a love poem. You remember the poem we have just done a moment ago, The Butcher's Daughter. It began with the idea of a love poem, but it was very, very other than a love poem, very different. You get the same feeling here from the title, All for You, as if a lover is offering a great gift to a beloved, from my interpretation at least, that it has nothing at all to do with love. So as I said, the title, All for You, suggests a love poem, and indeed a superficial reading of the poem gives the same impression, but it is actually something quite, quite different. We seem to see a girl or somebody being brought by someone who loves her to a palatial house equipped with all the trappings of status and wealth. That's the impression we get. And she is being repeatedly told that it is all for you. It all seems to be a gift from a lover, but I see the poem as being very, very different from that. I do not see it as a love poem in any way. The house to which the person is brought, whether it's male or female, is a place of splendour and plenty. The great staircase of the hall, the vaults, the guardroom, chapel, storeroom, and all the provisions of food, the fragrance of tea chests, the tins shining in ranks, the ten pound jars rich with shrivelled fruit. All this wealth and splendour is contrasted with the natural simplicity of where the girl has come from. Whoever is being addressed in the poem has arrived not on a snow-white steed, or nowadays in America, not on a snow-white steed of romantic legends, but on a donkey. And this donkey image is interesting because it suggests that the person being addressed in the poem has come from humble origins and is now being offered splendour beyond her wildest dreams and certainly beyond her natural needs. The donkey image is interesting. The donkey walks on, straight in at the door, and sticks his head in a manger. The donkey knows what his natural needs are. The subject of the poem that is the person being addressed, on the other hand, is being offered something that is way beyond her needs. And the speaker in the poem is trying to persuade her that all this status and all this wealth and palatial home will give her fulfilment. Of course we know that it will not. The motif, all for you, chanted throughout the poem is quite ironic. In fact, the whole house is quite unappealing. There is something cold and eerie and too ordered about the tins shining in ranks, and the labelled shelves, and the shriveled fruit. The shriveled fruit in particular suggests something lifeless, cold, and dried up. The question that arises is, would we want all this? Do we need all this? Would it give us happiness? And would it give us fulfilment? After all, what is it? Only an accumulation of material goods and material possessions. If that would fulfil our needs, we are quite poor indeed as human beings. This motif, all for you, may be addressed to all of us. It could be someone, society, or even ourselves, trying to convince us that accumulating possessions and wealth will give us happiness and fulfilment. That's what the poem could be about. In fact, it could be me telling myself that wealth and happiness and status would give me fulfilment. I telling myself, this is all for you. It could be society telling us that, and society is always telling us that, through one ad or another on television and radio, that wealth and status will lead to fulfilment. We have been told that directly and often seductively. And then we are invited to lie down and sleep along the labelled shelves. If we accept the invitation to lie down along the labelled shelves with the musty old produce, then we are surrendering to the attractions of wealth and status and material goods. If we do this, we become part of the furniture and spiritually dried up, dried up like the shriveled fruit. There is something quite sinister about this palatial house. It is alive in a creepy sort of way, as if it was trying to take hold of us. Of course, that's what wealth does. Does, and that's what temptation to wealth does. It possesses us. The staircase slouches as if it was alive. Slouches is quite a negative, ugly term. It has hints of decadence. The house has wings like some mythical bird. It has thick ribs, again, like some gothic monster. It is breathing the breath of ovens. And to fuel this house, living nature has been destroyed. The roots of the brushwood have been torn out and butchered. The question is, will this sinister house take possession of its occupants in some negative way or dehumanize them, as often happens in the case of material excess? The one positive in the whole scenario is the image of the key still in your pocket. This means you are free to accept the invitation to lie down and sleep along the shelves or reject this and be spiritually alive and free. Finally, if we accept the invitation offered, will we own the house or will the house own us? I'm now going to say a word on that beautiful poem, Translation, Translation for the Re-burial of the Magdalene Women. I won't read the poem through because of time constraints. And what's the theme in this poem? The exhumation of the remains of the Magdalene Women, giving a voice to the voiceless, righting wrongs, the unnatural being replaced by the natural, injustice being replaced by justice, the past being explored, and so on. A word on the background. The Magdalenes were the women who, for a variety of reasons, including becoming pregnant outside marriage, were sent very often by family and priests against their wills to Magdalene institutions, the Magdalene laundries. These women were seen as objects of shame, often called fallen women, and were locked up in these cruel institutions, often for their whole lives. And they were forced to work extremely hard for no pay in the laundries, which were run commercially by the nuns who managed the institutions. Interestingly, they were called Magdalene homes after Mary Magdalene, the fallen woman in the Gospel. It is believed that in the 150 years that these places were open, 30,000 women were admitted. In 1993 the story of the Magdalenes became a public issue. An order of nuns sold some land to a developer, and it was discovered that 150 women had been buried there over the years, in unmarked graves. The bodies were exhumed, cremated, and reburied in Glasnevin Cemetery with respect and dignity. They were at last given the respect, dignity, and recognition that they were denied in life. This poem, which was recited at the re-burial, honours and gives dignity to these women. It acknowledges the injustice and the wrong done to them. These women were buried without dignity. Now the process is reversed. They are exhumed with respect and reburied with dignity. The act of exhumation has brought the women and their story to light. It gives them recognition. The title translation is interesting. Of course, translation means being moved from one place to another, which is the case in the poem. But also, and more significantly, the poet translates these women's silence. She gives them a voice. The poem opens with the lines, The soil frayed and sifted evens the score. There are women here from every country, Just as there were in the laundries. The poet is referring to the exhumation of the forgotten women, who after a life of abuse, exploitation and suffering, were buried, as I said, without name or dignity. The image of sifting the soil to find the bones suggests searching the earth for the remains of those women, but it also suggests sifting through history to find their names and find their identities, which were blotted out. This unearthing of the women and their past somehow, as the poet says, evens the score. In other words, to some extent, it rights the wrong that was done to them. The unearthing with dignity somehow makes an attempt to balance out the indignity of being buried without a name. To some extent, it rights the wrong that was done to them in life, when they were treated as objects of shame, locked away, abused, forgotten, exploited in the laundries. Stanza 2 presents images of what these women endured. White light blinded and bleached out the high relief of a glance, where steam danced around stone drains, and giggled and slipped across water. This was a place without sympathy. The possibility of a comforting, sympathetic, friendly glance from a colleague was blinded and bleached out by white light. The white light, I think, is the rows and rows of white sheets and linen in that laundry. White light blinded and bleached out the high relief of a glance, where steam danced. The alliteration of the hard sounds of blinded and bleached conveys a cold, harsh, uncaring regime. The white light, as I said, summons up the image of rows and rows of white sheets and white linen, made even whiter by being bleached. These institutions were commercial businesses, operating on the unpaid labour of the women. The nuns had contracts to launder the sheets and bed linen of hotels and other establishments. The white light mentioned also conjures up a picture of these women at work in the laundry, day after day, where even the exchange of a friendly, sympathetic glance was unavailable. The poet sees these institutions as joyless places, where the women spent their days washing and ironing, without the joy of a natural giggle or dance. In fact, the only thing that danced and giggled was the steam and the water. The water giggled and danced as it flowed freely out of the laundry, from which the women had no escape. The freedom of nature, of water giggling and dancing, flowing freely, intensifies the trapped unnatural captivity of the woman. The assonance of giggled and slipped suggests nature, which is free, tormenting the women in captivity. Powerful image of the water giggling and dancing. That's what those girls should be doing. In joy and happiness and frivolity they should be dancing and giggling, laughing. But they were denied that in these joyless institutions. The only thing that giggled and danced was nature, flowing freely, in stark contrast to the imprisonment of these unfortunate women. Stanza three, on to stanza five. A system now ridges under the veil, shifting, searching for their parents, their names, the edge of words grinding against nature, as when water sank between the rotten teeth of soap, and every grasp seemed melted. One voice had begun, rising above the shuffle and hum, until every pocket in her skull blared with the note. Allow us now to hear it, sharp as an infant's cry, while the grass takes root, while the steam rises. The poet calls on us to help these women as they search for their identities, their parents, their real names. You see, in many cases, when these girls entered the institutions, they were encouraged to give up their real names, and to cut themselves off from their past, they were being robbed of their identity. The sympathetic poet imagines the spirits of these women, searching for their lost identities, their names, their parents. The edges of words grinding against nature suggest the harsh way they were spoken to by those in authority, and the conflict between their natural birth-family names and the new, unnatural names, labels, really, that were imposed on them in the institutions. Life in the laundry was horrific and awful. Here soap was rotten teeth, soap that viciously wore away the hands of the women, from washing and washing day after day, soap that wore away not only their hands, but their very lives. Here in the laundry, the women were totally helpless. Their helplessness is conveyed in the image of a melted grasp. Out of this horror emerges a single voice, representing all those women who have now merged into a collective in the grave. The voice of one woman, representing them all, rises above the noise of the laundry, above the shuffle and hum. This is a marvellous imaginative moment for the poet. She imagines one voice in the name of all these collective women, speaking on behalf of them all. She imagines the voice rising above the noise of the laundry, above the shuffle and hum of the laundry. This representative, collective voice rises as sharp as an infant's cry, reminding us that many of these women entered the institutions pregnant and were forced to give up their babies. That's so poignant, sharp as an infant's cry, and so rich because it takes you back to the awful emotional tragedy of many of those women. The keeper of the key no longer has them. The women are free, the doors are flung open, the truth is exposed, and the women rise like spirits. But instead of going to heaven, they haunt and darken Ireland's sky. They're a cloud of their memory. The voice rises until every pocket in her skull blared with a note, until she has told the whole Magdalene story. Now we hear their story. Ironically, those who were not heard in life are heard clearly now that they are dead. They can no longer be silenced. Their story has been told. They have been given the light of recognition. This program is sponsored by Connemara Holiday Lettings, your one-stop shop for all your holiday home rental needs. 095 22669. A word on bend in the road. The theme, first of all. This is a poem about memory, about time and change, and death too. It's about stasis. I mentioned that word at the beginning. It's about stasis and change. Memory here is used as a fixed point. Memory is used here as a moment of stasis, against which change and the passage of time are measured. The poet recalls a bend in the road as a special place for her family. She recalls the place and the occasion when they pulled over to get some air for their child, who was probably experiencing car sickness. This is the place where the child felt sick in the car, and they pulled over and waited in the shadow of the house. In that moment everything was still. A tall tree like a cat's tail waited. They opened the windows and breathed it easily, while nothing moved. Perhaps it's the very stillness that made the moment memorable for the poet. In the second stanza, time has moved on. It is twelve years later. Things have changed. But for the family, the bend in the road is a fixed point. It's a moment of stasis. It is what I call an anchor in time. The family have endowed this place with special significance. The poet focuses on the passage of time and on the changes that have happened in those twelve years. You are taller now than us. The tree is taller. The house is quite covered in with green creeper. The bend in the road is as silent as ever it was that day. The bend in the road is a fixed point, an anchor point, a place of permanence, in contrast to all the change that has affected the family and people and even nature in the past twelve years. The poet reflects that the memories of all that happened in those twelve years are piled high, wrapped lightly like the one cumulus cloud in a perfect sky, softly packed like the air. The cloud image suggests the accumulation of memory. It suggests the idea of memory piled on memory as experience takes place and time passes and event passes into memory after memory, piled high like one cumulus cloud in a perfect sky. Those memories of absent and dead friends are precious and are cherished by the family. They are wrapped lightly, stored carefully. Wrapped lightly also suggests that these memories are easily accessible. They are softly packed like the cloud. I think it suggests that they are precious. This store of memories contains memories of absent ones, memories of loved ones whom the family watched as death approached, the people who were alive twelve years ago and who are now dead. She recalls them as they lay dying, wrapped and sealed by sickness, trapped by sickness, guessing the piled weight of sleep we knew they could not carry long. This conveys the idea of the family watching a loved one or loved ones drifting into death. Whenever the family pass the bend in the road, or even think of it, all their lost friends become present, present in the sense that they are remembered. Whenever we remember somebody, we make them present. This is the place of their presence in the tree, in the air. The bend in the road represents status, something fixed, permanent, unchanging, in contrast to all the change that has occurred. The family have changed, the boy has changed, people have gone away, people have died. Even nature has changed, that tree has changed, the creeper has grown over the house, but the bend in the road is as silent as ever it was that day. Poem where the poet deals with memory and the passage of time, and she deals with the passage of time and change by setting it against a fixed point, an anchor point, a moment of status. A word on the poem on lacking the killer instinct. First let us be clear on what we mean by the killer instinct. It means absolute determination to win, to overcome obstacles, to overcome some challenge, to survive, to see things through. The killer instinct by its nature is selfish. It involves aiming ruthlessly for one's goal without considering the welfare of others. Now to the poem. I will say a few words about it. The poet is reading the morning newspaper and she sees a photograph of two greyhounds chasing a hare, a common sight at a courting event. The hare grabs her attention and sparks off her memory, the memory of another hare. She recalls how many years earlier when her father was dying she fled into the hills. She was probably unable to cope psychologically with the thought and sight of her dying father, so she fled into the hills. She recalls that on that occasion when she fled into the hills she encountered one hare absorbed, sitting still right in the grassy middle of the track. The absorbed hare is calm, at ease, in the midst of her natural world. The hare in the morning newspaper is running for her very life, pursued by two hounds. This hare running for her life is full of speed and fear, but also of skill and glad power, glad power, suggesting that the hare knows that it can fool and outwit the greyhounds and make them tumble over absurdly gross, glad power. And the poet admires the speed and fear of the hare, and also the glad power of the hare, who seems to have pride in her agility and skill to outwit the clumsy hounds. Next comes another memory. The poet remembers a story that her father told her of an adventure when he was 19 years old in 1921, running for his life from a lorry load of black and tans. She remembers a story that her father told her. Like the hare, he too was running for his life, chased by a lorry full of soldiers, black and tans, during the War of Independence in 1921. In that race for survival he shared the adrenaline rush and excitement and glad power that the hare in the photograph felt. The sympathetic poet is aware of the injustice involved, in chasing both man and hare. Her father was being chased by a lorry load of vicious, undisciplined, thug soldiers, the infamous black and tans. The poet, with her respect for nature and wildlife in general, makes it clear that she regards coursing as a very cruel sport. The hare, like him, should never have been coursed. And she draws a wonderful parallel between man and nature, between the hare's situation and her father's situation, both of whom were being pursued, both the hare and her father, driven by a ruthless determination to survive, driven by the killer instinct, cleverly outwit their pursuers. Man and hare are running for their lives, and man and nature are driven by the killer instinct, the instinct to survive, and by their skill and strategy they cleverly outwit their pursuers. Referring to her father, she says, what clever she gets off! Another day she'll fool the stupid dogs, double back on her own scent downhill, and choose her time to spring out of the frame, all while the pack is labouring up. The poet, in admiration of the hare, sees a future occasion, when the hare, having learned a strategy from experience, will be able to outwit the hounds. The hare, by doubling back on her own scent, will send the dogs in the opposite direction, to where she is hiding. She will survive another day, using the same strategy. She will survive because she has the killer instinct. Her father also, driven by a ruthless determination to survive and live, driven by the killer instinct, used a clever strategy to survive and outwit the soldiers, just as the hare used a clever strategy to outwit the hounds. Back to the father. And this, of course, is a story that the father would have told the poet. The lorry was growling, and he was clever. He saw a house and risked an open kitchen door. The soldiers found six people in a country kitchen, one drying his face, Dale snooking, the towel half covering his face. The lorry left. The people let him sleep there. He came out into a blissful dawn. The lorry was growling behind him, like the hounds were growling behind the hare. And just as the hare did a double back on its own scent, so did her father do a double back. He reverted to being a civilian, or at least seeming to be an ordinary civilian in an ordinary country kitchen. Now the poem takes a moral tone. The poet questions her father's action. Was it right of him to have risked the lives of the innocent people in the house for the sake of his own survival? The soldiers, if they had realized that the occupants were sheltering a rebel, might have shot them all and burned the house. The fact is, her father was driven by the killer instinct, the ruthless, selfish determination to survive. He thought only of himself. That is how the killer instinct works. The poet seems caught between admiration for her father's cleverness on the one hand, and condemnation for his having risked the lives of innocent people. The hare, of course, is outside the moral world of right and wrong. The hare just used her cleverness without endangering any creature. In the final lines of the poem, the poet turns the focus on herself and on what she did. She had fled into the hills, unable to cope with her father's imminent death. She was thinking only about herself. She had no sense of duty to her father. She was totally self-focused, like the hare, like her father. She realizes now that she should not have left her father, and I should not have run away. She realizes now that she has a duty to her father, and she answered the call of duty. I went back to the city next morning. If she had the killer instinct, she would have stayed away, thinking only of herself. But she lacked the killer instinct, and that makes her a better, more caring human being. She returns to carry out her responsibility to her dying father. She seems to have been healed and cured by nature, by the sight of the hare in her hour of ease. That sight of the hare in her hour of ease gives her peace and calm and tranquillity, which enable her to cope with the trauma of her dying father. Being washed in brown bog water represents, I think, the cleansing power of nature. She is being cleansed of selfishness and made capable of reaching out to the needs of others, in this case, the needs of her dying father. Fortunately, she did not have the killer instinct. She responded to the call of duty. A word on Ní Chulnán's style and technique. And that's very important, because if you're familiar at all with the sort of questions they ask you in the Higher Living Certificate English examination, they usually involve theme and technique, or theme and style. Well, I think we've dealt fairly comprehensively with themes. Now, a word on style. First of all, her language, Ní Chulnán's language, is usually colloquial, very ordinary, everyday, familiar language. He fell in love with the butcher's daughter when he saw her passing by in her white trousers, dangling a knife on a ring at her belt. Or, from another poem, once beyond the gate of the strange stable-yard we dismount, the donkey walks on, straight in at the wide door, and sticks his head in a manger. Ordinary, colloquial language. You do, of course, know that Ní Chulnán's poems are written in free verse. You won't find her writing poetry like Robert Frost in iambic pentameter. I suppose you could say that the free verse makes her poems sound more familiar, more everyday, maybe more accessible, not as ordered or as worked as, say, a poem by Robert Frost with its strict adherence to iambic pentameter. Chulnán, a modern poet, writes in free verse, colloquial language. I gave two examples of colloquial language there, one from Street and one from All for You. You'll find it quite easy to find more examples yourselves if you need them. However, in both the two cases I mentioned, although the language is simple and colloquial, in both cases this ordinary, simple language creates a sense of mystery. It puts us into a state of anticipation, like the opening of any good story. Staying with technique, a major feature of Ní Chulnán's style is storytelling. It's one of her great skills, storytelling that begins in mystery, like He Fell in Love with the Butcher's Daughter or the opening of All for You. It begins in mystery. That is how she draws us into the poems. She employs the technique of storytelling, drawing us in with a sort of mystery in the very beginning. And even when we have read a Ní Chulnán poem, there still remains an element of mystery at the end. For example, the ending of Street is open to a range of interpretations. What will happen next? Will he enter that door and climb the stairs? Or what's going on at the top of the stairs? Or will he go away? Likewise, the ending of the poem All for You, you have the key still in your pocket. What will you do? Will you lie down among the labeled shelves? Or will you reject all this? The poem, like a good short story, leaves the ending opening, and that's one of the great skills in a short story, leaving the ending open. That's a major feature of Ní Chulnán's style, and that is how she draws us in and keeps us interested. Another feature of her style is this. Her style is elusive. Her poetry is elusive. What I mean by that is, it's very difficult to pin down her meaning. It's very difficult to say precisely and exactly, this is a poem about. In fact, she rarely ever imposes a definite meaning. Think of the poem Street. Think of All for You. Think of poems like that, especially. She doesn't impose any definite meaning. She leaves the reader free. You can think what you like about what happens in Street, or indeed what the poem All for You is all about. It's up to you and me and the reader to decide what we think the poem is about. That's her technique. It's elusive. She leaves us free, and that's one of the appealing things about her poetry. We are free to interpret it, and in that way we share in the making of the poem. The result is that many of her poems, and indeed many of her images, are open to a variety of interpretation, depending, of course, on where the reader is coming from. Both Street and All for You illustrate this elusive quality. As I've said, the great thing about Ní Chuilinan is she does not impose any definite interpretation of the reader. She respects us and respects our response. Another feature of her style is her sudden dramatic openings. Just look yourself at the opening lines of some Ní Chuilinan poems. There is no build-up. They open suddenly, abruptly. We are dramatically and suddenly launched into the middle of things. You see this in poems like Street, All for You, or Lacking the Killer Instinct. Another aspect of her style that I want to mention is this. I call it intellectual force. What I mean is this. In a Ní Chuilinan poem, there is always a brain at work. There is always a robust intelligence at work. Or, if you like, she's simply a very, very clever poet, clever in the sense of intelligent. This is especially so in the poem To Nile Woods and Xenia. Here, Ní Chuilinan's use of fairy tale is just brilliant. She uses fairy tales as templates for real life. She uses fairy tales as templates for the real future which she wishes for her son and daughter-in-law. In each fairy tale mentioned, challenges are encountered, obstacles are overcome with courage, and there is always a happy ever after life. So, through these fairy tales and myths, Ní Chuilinan is passing on wisdom to her son and daughter-in-law, reminding them that in their married future they will encounter difficulties which are to be overcome. But, and very cleverly, she's using the fairy tales to tell them that those obstacles can be overcome as they were in the fairy tales, and that the couple will live happily ever afterwards as happened in fairy tales. This is just brilliant. It's an example of intellectual force where she uses fairy tale and myth as templates for the realities of life and for the happiness that she wishes for her son and daughter-in-law. Think of the word templates. Fairy tales cleverly used as templates. The use of fairy tale in the poem to Nile Woods and Xenia is very clever, but so also is the reference to the story of Ruth in the Bible. Ruth, I mentioned earlier, a Moabite woman, overcame difficulties, and because of her courage and hard work and loyalty, she was blessed with a prosperous marriage and a happy ever after life. Ruth, the Moabite woman, marries the Israelite Boaz. Like the Russian girl Xenia in the poem, Ruth trusts in and finds happiness among strangers, and that too is the wish of the poet for her daughter-in-law. This is brilliant, this parallel she draws between the Ruth story and the Xenia story. It's a brain at work, intellectual force. And because Ní Chuilinan's images and symbols are so rich, and because she leaves us to work them out ourselves, we always get a feeling of intellectual satisfaction from our poetry, a feeling that we are sharing in the poem. And the oftener we read a Ní Chuilinan poem, the more it unfolds, the richer our response, and indeed, the greater our own reader satisfaction is. A major feature of Ní Chuilinan's style is its dramatic quality. I mentioned already she employs the style of storytelling, while of course all good stories are dramatic, like all good plays, because they have a time and a place and a setting and characters and so on. So, Ní Chuilinan's poems are extremely dramatic. She often uses the technique of storytelling, with setting and characters and happenings, and sometimes an element of mystery. The storyteller technique gives the poems a dramatic quality. This is illustrated in the poem Street and All for You, and especially in Lacking the Killer Instinct. I mentioned already that her poems are dramatic because of their sudden abrupt openings, openings which launch us into the middle of things. Street, Lacking the Killer Instinct, All for You, The Bend in the Road, Translation. Try to be able to quote the opening lines of these poems, and you'll be able to illustrate one of the dramatic elements of the poems. Another dramatic feature you find in a poem is the way she hops between past and present. For example, The Bend in the Road, on Lacking the Killer Instinct, and Translation. Above all, Ní Chuilinan's poems are made dramatic by the use of contrast. A Ní Chuilinan poem is never dead on the page, it's never bland, it's always alive, vibrant, dramatic, dynamic. And this vibrant dynamism and dramatic quality comes from dramatic contrast, playing off one idea against its opposite. She does this in all her poems. She plays off contrasting images, contrasting ideas, the past with the present and so on, man with nature, justice against injustice, the public against the private in street, all over the place, her own sense of duty as against her father's killer instinct. All her poems are built on dramatic contrast, which gives the poems a vibrant, dynamic, alive quality. Also, something else that gives life to her poems is the use of vivid imagery, especially the imagery she uses to bring the past to life, her own past, her father's past, her family's past, and the tragic past of the Magdalene women. Just an extremely dramatic poet. Staying with style and technique, Chuilinan's poems are rich with imagery and symbol. I cannot recall reading a poet whose work is so rich in image and symbol. Let's look at the poem on lacking the killer instinct. I'll give you some images straight away. One hair absorbed sitting still right in the grassy middle of the track. This image conveys the calm and tranquillity and repose of nature as opposed to the panic of the poet who has fled in panic from her father's dying bedside. She learns from this calm hair, learns from nature, and goes home to do her duty to her dying father. The poet's admiration for the glad power of the hair that outwits the hounds and survives. The image of the poet washed in brown water. Look at this image. This conveys to me the idea that she has been cleansed by nature, cleansed of self, and ready to focus on her duty to others, in particular in this case her dying father. Turning to the poem to Niall Woods and Xenia, you have the image of the young couple seeing the same star pitching its tent on the steeple. Wonderful image or symbol representing the young couple being guided by the same principles, sharing the same values, and being ideal marriage partners. The image of the young couple on a fairy tale journey into the future, with difficulty to be overcome, with challenges to be met, and the reward of happy ever afterwards. In that image there's the wisdom of the poet and the blessing of the poet. Most important of all, all the fairy tales in the poem are so clever they serve a double purpose. First of all, they are the stories that the poet as a mother told and read to her son when he was a child, stories that he will never forget and hopefully will indeed tell his own children. So firstly, these fairy tales link mother and son, a link that the poet naturally hopes will never be broken. But these fairy tales and these stories also represent continuity. I said a moment ago they represent the link between mother and son, because she told him those fairy tales in his childhood, and they also represent, brilliantly, continuity, because the son will pass them on to his children. The fairy tales used in this poem are templates for the reality which the mother wishes for her son and daughter-in-law. Another image, or symbol if you like, and again it's so clever, again it's an example of Ne Quilinan's intellectual force. The image of Ruth from the Bible symbolises difficulties met and difficulties overcome by courage and trust and hard work and loyalty and happiness found in marriage to a man of a different culture. This brilliantly parallels the story of the young couple, one of whom is Irish and one Russian. Again, the image of the cat speaking in Irish and Russian conveys the notion of a rich merging of cultures. Turning to another poem, I stay with images and symbols. All for you, the image of the donkey walking straight in at a wide door and sticking his head in the manger. This is a nature symbol, a nature image, suggesting being satisfied with one's natural needs as opposed to the temptation to status and wealth represented by the house described in the poem. I love that image of the range of brushwood, the roots torn out and butchered. This to me is an image of nature being destroyed to satisfy human greed. The shriveled fruit suggests that nature has become lifeless in this Gothic mansion and that the occupants will themselves become spiritually dead. The dried fruit and the dead brushwood, nature that was once full of life, is now dead in this strange house, a house that has no spiritual dimension. The image of the key still in your pocket suggests that we, or the subject of the poem, whoever has been spoken to, are free to reject all this temptation to wealth and status. Turning to translation, the edges of words grinding against nature, this image conveys the unnatural names, the label names assigned to the women when they were admitted to the laundries. These names given to those girls stifled their natural birth names, birth names which represented their true nature. So we have the edges of words grinding against nature. I love the next image, I think it's absolutely brilliant. The steam and the water giggling and dancing represents the freedom and the joy of nature, freedom of laughter and dance that was cruelly denied to the women in these Magdalene institutions. You have the idea of the water flowing freely, highlighting the captivity of the women by contrast. Another feature of Nyquilnán's style is the use of dramatic contrast, and I'll give you several examples now. Nyquilnán gives an edge and an energy and a dramatic quality and dynamism to her poems by dramatic contrast, by contrasting ideas and feelings and images, by playing one idea off against its opposite. For example, in the poem On Lacking the Killer Instinct, you have the contrasting images of a hare absorbed in the cam of a grassy track, and the image of a hare running for its very life. The first is an image of the ideal, calm state of nature. The second suggests cruelty and injustice, the same injustice of which the poet's father was a victim when he too was running for his life. The poet cares for both. In this poem there's also the contrast between the poet herself, who fled up into the hills, unable to cope with the imminent death of her father, and the changed woman, the healed woman, healed by nature, who returned, having washed herself in brown bog water, to fulfil her duty to her dying father. And of course there is the conflict between her father, who had the killer instinct and saved himself by risking the lives of others, and the poet, who proudly acknowledges that she lacked the killer instinct. There is also, of course, the conflict between the poet's admiration for her father's cleverness and resourcefulness, and her questioning of his disregard for the safety of innocent people. Turning to the poem to Nile Woods, the juxtapositions here are entirely positive. All the juxtapositions. You know juxtaposition when you're placing two things side by side. And here, in this poem, you have, for example, two different cultures. This is not contrast, no, it's the opposite. Two different cultures, Irish and Russian, merging in love. Fairy tales becoming reality. I call that more juxtaposition, or perhaps you could call them opposites merging. An Irish man and a Russian girl merging in love. Fairy tales merging with reality. So opposites merging in a harmonious future. Turning to that poem Street, that semi-mysterious poem, here we have the contrast between the public world of the street, where the man first sees the butler's daughter, contrasted with the domestic world, the female world of the girl's home, her female world that he can only view through a half-open door. Both worlds are highlighted by being placed in contrast. In the same poem you have the feminine, elegant, white trousers, contrasted with the bloody knife dangling from her belt. This, again, serves to highlight both aspects. It highlights the femininity and glamour, if you like, of the girl, and the opposite, the blood and violence and masculinity of the male also. It provides an incongruous mix of opposites. Turning to the poem All for You, again we have some wonderful contrast. We have the natural world of the donkey at the manger, and his natural needs, dramatically contrasted with the palatial house and the exaggerated needs of wealth and status. The subject of the poem has arrived at this strange place on a donkey, suggesting humble origins, and now he or she, or whoever the subject of the poem is, is being offered high status in a palatial mansion. The whole thrust of the poem says that this will not mean happiness. In the poem translation you have two different burials contrasted. You have the original, shameful, secret burial in unmarked graves, contrasted with the final re-burial, with ceremony, respect and dignity in Glasnevin. And there is the striking contrast between water, giggling and dancing, and the joyless existence of the women for whom there was no laughter and no dancing, no giggling, no dancing. And there is also the contrast between the women's natural names, between their natural names and the label names assigned to them in the institutions. And finally, in the poem, The Bend and the Road, there is the dramatic contrast between stasis and change, between past and present. In this poem, a simple event in an ordinary location becomes a point of stasis, an anchor point, a fixed point in time against which change and passage of time are measured. It might help you, preparing for an examination on Ní Chuillinan's poems, to focus on a statement like this. In her poetry, Chuillinan conveys her own feelings and her own experiences and the feelings and experiences of others through vivid imagery and dramatic contrast. That's one type of statement that would bring a lot of her style and content together. Or the notion that many of Chuillinan's poems focus on her own past and the past of others. That would involve the Magdalene nuns and her father and her family indeed, and so on. Focusing on questions like these will help you to bring all your various ideas together. So the notion of the past, the notion of imagery, and above all, going back to where we came in, that she's a very elusive poet, hard to pin down. There are many interpretations of her poems and each interpretation is valid, so long as you are being true to the poem. Finally, I want to wish you all the best in your upcoming examination in June. A very special thanks to today's lecturer, Dennis Craven, for a very insightful lecture on the poetry of Eileen O'Cullinan. Please join us again next week, and bye for now. Bye.
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