On this episode of Turning Points, Patricia Killeen welcomed Úna Ní Cheallaigh, an award-winning poet. Úna hails from Dublin, Ireland. Educated at St Patrick's College (DCU), University College and Trinity College Dublin, she had a varied career in teaching, including Special Education, Home School Community Liaison and Drama in Education.

Úna also holds an M.Phil in Theatre Studies from the University of Glasgow and a Master's in Creative Writing from University College Cork. 

She has been involved in drama and writers' groups and is currently a member of Poetry Circle at the Irish Writers Centre. She has enjoyed many opportunities to travel, and time to write in Ferrazze, Italy, was organised by the Irish Writers Centre.

Úna describes her writing journey and presents her collection of poetry entitled ‘The Colour of Time’, described by poet James Harpur as an ‘elegy touched with beauty’. 

She spent a month at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in 2018, and revisiting the Camille Claudel salon in the Rodin Museum would lead her to pen a sequence at the very heart of ‘The Colour of Time’, giving voice to the sculptor, Camille Claudel. Many of us know that Claudel was committed to an asylum (in 1913) after destroying some of her artworks. Claudel died in 1943, after spending 30 years in the Montedevergues insane asylum and the 'Mémoire de Montedevergues' sequence in ‘The Colour of Time’ gives the incarcerated Camille Claudel a soul-touching, poetic, and finally, unforgettable voice.

‘The Colour of Time’, by Úna Ní Cheallaigh, published by Arlen House https://thesalmonbookshop.com/products/the-colour-of-time-poems-by-una-ni-cheallaigh

Musée Rodin: https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en

Musée Camille Claudel : https://www.museecamilleclaudel.fr/