Contemporary Writers Series: Doireann Ní Ghríofa visits Canisius

Byline: Cooper Hillman, Assistant News Editor

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, Canisius University welcomed its first writer of the Contemporary Writers Series for the Fall 2026 semester. Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer, poet and essayist, who is bilingual and writes her works in both English and Irish. Her newest book, “Said the Dead”, follows her previous works, and acts as a fusion of many genres including memoir, poetry, novel and essay, as well as social history and biography. She visited the Montante Cultural Center, and discussed her history as a writer, some of her favorite poems and sections of her newest book.

Ní Ghríofa has written seven critically acclaimed works of poetry including her first work, “A Ghost in the Throat”, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was also awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

She began her presentation by lightly discussing how far she had traveled to be at Canisius, as she flew 17 and a half hours to get to Buffalo. She expressed immense gratitude to the university and to Dr. Mick Cochrane as well as the entire Hassett Family for being given the opportunity to visit and be a part of the event. She also addressed controversies surrounding ICE and their presence in the local community, stating that she stands in solidarity with peaceful protestors as well as expressing disdain for their actions within Buffalo and the wider country. After her introduction, she began to discuss her history as a writer, and explained some of her motivations for her works, which mainly involve the dead.

Ní Ghríofa noted that she believes the dead can make their voices heard through literature, and how her inspiration for poetry was summed up in a line from another poem that stated, “poetry arrived, searching for me.” She discussed how her first poem came to her as she sat in her car outside the hospital while her grandfather passed away, as she was caring for her newborn child. 

She believes that poetry is like a portal to the past or a trap door in how it sucks readers and writers into them, and how that led to her starting to write endlessly as she gave herself a little quiet time to write daily. Death and the dead became a constant source for her works as she stated, “from death, a spark arrived; that became a flame, a flame of poetry writing my way. Sometimes I think there is no poetry without the intervention of the dead.” 

She had studied a renowned poem by an Irish woman about the death of her husband to British soldiers, only to find next to no information on the life of the woman, but her inspiration for “Said the Dead” was based on information found in the archives of a mental hospital by her house. 

She ended her discussion with questions and answers with audience members. She includes advice for younger writers, “Our strongest words are our simplest words.” To conclude the event, she returned to the center of her presentation with a very simple statement she made about her writings, “death made a writer of me.”