Her poems have been translated into French, German, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Estonian, Japanese, and English.
In 1991, she received the prestigious American Ireland Fund Literary Award. Her poetry skillfully blends traditional Irish folklore with the cosmopolitan culture of contemporary Ireland. Ní Dhomhnaill has published four collections of poems in Irish: An Dealg Droighin (1981), Féar Suaithinseach (1984), Feis (1991), and Cead Aighnis (1998), each of which has won the Seán Ó Ríordáin Award. Four bilingual editions of her work also have been published, with English translations by poets such as Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon.