The Sun-fish, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize, reinforces convictions that Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's transforming and transporting ways of seeing are like no other: silk scarves fly at her face like a car wash'; there's the whisper of a cashmere sleeve', the nuns' leathery kiss' and a lighthouse scraping the sea with its beam'. Familiar motifs — waves, tides, dividing lines, arches and doorways, journeys, a high tower and water reprise previous effects and reach forward into new domains. Poems about men and the men in her family, a woman's story and the stories of women', elegies, homages and her family's history, are developed through mist or the gap in a tale. Other poems tease out the tricks of light, at dawn or dusk, to open the lock of language. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry is one of the marvels of our time.
