Women. Poetry. Translation. A Conversation with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Martina Evans.  

To mark International Translation Day, hear readings and a discussion on Irish poetry and translation. This event was a part of the "Women and Literature" series by the Embassy of Ireland in Latvia, in partnership with Literature Ireland and the National Library of Latvia, where the event took place. This panel discussion included special guests from Ireland and Latvia, as well as a spotlight on Latvian poet Astrīde Ivaska’s time in Ireland. 

Our guests:

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 

Born 1942 in Cork, Fellow emeritus of Trinity College, Dublin. Ireland Professor of Poetry 2016-19. She has published academic work on the Renaissance and on translation, as well as eleven collections of poetry. Her Collected Poems appeared in 2020 and was awarded the Pigott Prize. She has published translations of poetry from several languages, most recently Dánta Antonella Anedda, translated from Italian into Irish, published by Cois Life in 2019. Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht (poems translated into Chinese) appeared from Sichuan Ethnic Publishing Company, Chengdu, in 2020. With Macdara Woods, Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson she founded the literary magazine Cyphers and remains its principal editor.

Martina Evans

Martina Evans grew up in County Cork and trained in Dublin as a radiographer before moving to London in 1988. She is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose. Now We Can Talk Openly About Men (Carcanet 2018) was shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the Pigott Poetry Prize and the Roehampton Poetry Prize and was an Observer, TLS and Irish Times Book of the Year in 2018. American Mules, (Carcanet 2021) won the Pigott Poetry Prize in 2022. She is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and an Irish Times poetry critic.

The conversation was moderated by Dr. philol. Zita Kārkla, a post doc at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of University of Latvia.

This podcast episode has been released jointly by the National Library of Latvia and Literature Ireland; Literature Ireland's episode is introduced by the Director of Literature Ireland, Sinéad Mac Aodha.

Literature Ireland promotes Irish literary authors and their work worldwide and is funded by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council. To learn more about what we do, visit Literature Ireland's website. For any queries email [email protected]. The intro/outro music in this series is used with permission from David Hilowitz. Intro sound editing by Ciarán McCann.