Southword Poetry Podcast · Munster Literature Centre

Eilean Ni Chuilleanáin: The Map of the World

·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

The episode starts with reputation and place. Cliona calls Cullinan exemplary, but the word lands less like a medal than a way into the work: Cork, the collected poems, and the fact that new poems still keep arriving with force. Selection matters because it is not tidy archiving. The new and selected poems raise the question of what a writer keeps, what gets left behind, and what a later book can quietly correct. The cover earns its place in the conversation too. Cliona points to the mother's portrait and the dedication to both parents, so family, memory, and authority enter through the book as an object, not just through the poems. Then the talk gets satisfyingly practical. Cullinan describes notebook versions, typed versions, printed amendments, and the odd new distance that comes when a poem reaches the screen. Nothing here feels rushed. Some poems settle quickly, but the better part of the discussion stays with drafts, returns, and that hard-to-name moment when a poem finally feels done. MacDarragh's presence gives the craft talk its bite. When he was alive, he and Cullinan asked each other whether a poem was finished, and his corrections could be practical, seasonal, stylistic, or tonal. One crop remembered wrongly is enough to make the point. A field in season can matter as much as cadence. Style gets discussed without being flattened. His phrase about lambent writing leads into sentiment, polysyllabic texture, and the lure of a Yeatsian glow. The loss is there, plainly. Cullinan says she misses that exchange, and the episode lets the answer sit. Translation becomes another place to test language, because accuracy and style can both be argued there. The closing reading turns colder, with headlights, roadkill, milk, weather, and black-and-white dreaming. No neat bow, thankfully.

As heard by us

A calm, craft-minded conversation about revision, translation, and a poet still at work.

Cliona treats the conversation less like a career survey and more like a close read of why the poet's work still feels immediate. She stays rooted in Cork, in Irish, and in the habit of returning to her own books, from Map of the World in 2023 to the 2025 new and selected volume…

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Why you'd press play

You want a reflective poetry interview about revision, selection, finished shape, and how a poet decides a poem is done.

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