Promoting and supporting the teaching and study of Scottish literature and language
Ronald Black is a former Senior Lecturer in Celtic in the University of Edinburgh and the editor of An Lasair / The Flame: An Anthology of Eighteenth-century Gaelic Verse (Birlinn, 2019).
This splendid book shows Gaelic verse alive and kicking. It’s an anthology of work by eighteen poets, which is a good number. There have been anthologies of Gaelic verse by four poets (too few) and a hundred (too many). What’s more, I dislike anthologies that divide poems into categories like ‘Elegy’, ‘Eulogy’, ‘Love’, ‘Satire’. These […]
This little book contains twenty-one poems by Taylor Strickland about love and sex, based on Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s ‘Moladh Mòraig’ and ‘Moladh air Sàr Bhod’, along with four poems by Strickland about war and nature, based on ‘Òran don Phrionnsa’ and ‘Allt an t-Siùcair’. In every case the bit of Gaelic verse on which the English […]
‘Stretch, pull and bend.’ These are words as powerful for the oarsman as ‘On your marks, get set, go’ for the runner or ‘Load, aim, fire’ for the soldier. No doubt there are many other such triads. These things have a special force of their own, all to do with testing the limits of human […]
Sorley MacLean | Somhairle MacGill-Eain (1911–1996), and Derick Thomson | Ruaraidh MacThòmais (1921–2012), were the two leading Scottish Gaelic poets of the twentieth century. Although the difference in age between them was not great, it is fair to say that MacLean’s era was the second quarter of the century, while Thomson dominated the fifty years […]