Bøger af Doireann Ni Ghriofa

”Da vi mødtes første gang, var jeg et barn, og hun havde været død i flere hundrede år.” I denne enestående bog bruger den irske lyriker, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, essayet, autofiktionen og oversættelsen til at udforske den dybe sammenhæng mellem to digtere (den ene hende selv) som har 300 år imellem sig. I 1700-tallet drikker en irsk adelskvinde nogle håndfulde af sin døde elskedes blod og sætter sig derpå ned og skriver et fantastisk digt om deres kærlighed (en klassiker i irsk litteratur). I nutiden er trebarnsmoren Doireann Ní Ghríofa tæt på en personlig tragedie. Da hun opdager det gæliske digt fra 1700-tallet, bliver hun besat af den genklang teksten giver i hendes eget liv, og beslutter at afdække den adelige kvindes glemte historie og grave hendes storslåede tekst fri af det lag af (mandlige) fortolkninger/oversættelser, der overlejrer den. ”En ekstraordinær bog der sammenfletter fortid og nutid, jeget og den anden, i en ny slags poesi.” – Emily Pine, Noter til mig selv

"One of the best books of this dreadful year."-Irish IndependentWhen we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.I am eleven, a dark-haired child given to staring out window ... Her voice makes it 1773, a fine day in May, and puts English soldiers crouching in ambush; I add ditch-water to drench their knees. Their muskets point towards a young man who is falling from his saddle in slow, slow motion. A woman hurries in and kneels over him, her voice rising in an antique formula of breath and syllable the teacher calls a caoineadh, a keen to lament the dead.In the eighteenth century, on discovering her husband has been murdered, an Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament that reaches across centuries to the young Doireann Ni¿ Ghri¿ofa, whose fascination with it is later rekindled when she narrowly avoids fatal tragedy in her own life and becomes obsessed with learning everything she can about the poem Peter Levi has famously called "the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain" during its era. A kaleidoscopic blend of memoir, autofiction, and literary studies, A Ghost in the Throat moves fluidly between past and present, quest and elegy, poetry and the people who make it.