Doireann Ní Ghríofa

To Star the Dark

'Maude knows the etymology of 'captivate', 
 how it holds both charm and a cage.' 

New poems of  blood and birdsong, of rain and desire, of GIFs and ghosts, described as 'tremendous' (The Irish Times) and 'luminous' (The Irish Independent)

- The Irish Times ‘Best Poetry of 2021’
- Forward Prize - Highly Commended - 'Escape: A Chorus in Capes'

“To open Doireann Ní Ghríofa's 'To Star the Dark' is to see a negative of the night sky, spare black type starring the pale page... underpinning tremendous expression of enigmatic time. ”   — The Irish Times

Nine Silences


A book unlike any other, created in collaboration with visual artist Alice Maher and designer Jamie Murphy of The Salvage Press. Having drawn its beginnings from Alice Maher's discovery of a stone mermaid in Kilcooley Abbey, this book is woven of salmon leather, with marbled end-papers of carrageen moss.  Through art and poetry, 'Nine Silences' explores ideas of female monstrousness in Irish folkore, hybridity, desire, and shame. 
'Faobhar an Fhómhair~Cusp of Autumn' A signed, numbered, limited edition poetry broadsheet now available from Kennys' Bookshop & Gallery, in aid of The Simon Community

Lies

A bilingual selection of poems in translation

An Irish Times Book of the Year
An Irish Independent Book of 2018

"Like [Eavan] Boland, Ní Ghríofa constructs a mysterious world for her readers from the matter of ordinary life. The poems of this collection impress upon us that magic and depth can be found in the minutiae of the everyday.” - Poetry Ireland Review

“She is a brilliant addition to the distinguished succession of bilingual poets writing in Irish and English." - Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Ireland Professor of Poetry

Singing, Still

In 2017, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and LeAnne Howe collaborated on a pamphlet of trilingual poems titled 'Singing, Still,' an honouring of the generosity of the Choctaw people during the Irish famine. That pamphlet has now sold out, but the poems are included in the book 'Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange,' with a foreword from President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins. More on the relationship between the Irish and Choctaw peoples here.

Clasp

"In my arms, you stir. A thousand streetlamps
flicker to light in the dusk. As I watch your eyes open,
the reek of roasting hops knits a blanket of scent around us."

Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
Hartnett Poetry Award
Irish Times Poetry Award shortlist

"...long-considered obsessions are explored with tenderness and unflinching curiosity. [These] ​poems excel in their consideration of motherhood​." - Poetry Magazine (Chicago)

"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

Doireann Ní Ghríofa