Edited by Colin Bramwell, with Gerda Stevenson
Published 2024. Paperback, 138pp, 9 x 6ins, £12.95 / $20. LONGLISTED FOR SCOTTISH POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024.
ISBN 9781848619050 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Aonghas Macneacail (1942–2022) originally intended for this book to signal his return to the literary sphere after a long convalescence. As his health declined, he was clearly comforted by the fact that this work would see the light of day: we talked together frequently about it, until he was unable to do so. He wanted this book to correct the perception of himself as a Gaelic writer, first and foremost. Gaelic was one of his three languages – Scots and English were the others. Before we started working on the book, I visited him to interview him about the project. We both agreed that a book of English-language work might have some public utility, as proof that Scottish writing is polyglot by nature. We thought that correcting the public perception of him as a Gaelic poet entirely would also be to correct perceptions of division in the language situation in Scotland more generally. Now that the process of putting this book together has come to an end, the truth of that feels clearer, to me. Aonghas’s work looks forward to a future where, as he puts it in ‘last night’, ‘my language [will] embrace / its sister tongue’. As with any bilingual poet, the point must be made: his English poetry drew from the same source as his Gaelic work. It is the intertwining of tongues which creates the tenor of the work. Aonghas’s famous poem ‘tha gàidhlig bheò’ (‘gaelic is alive’) ends with the following lines: ‘ach dèan dannsa dèan dannsa / `s e obair th`ann a bhith dannsa’. ‘be dancing be dancing / it is work to be dancing’. Of course the dance will require a partner. English was a partner-language to Aonghas’s Gaelic. Scots was another. This linguistic hybridity defines him, as much as it defines the general tenor of Scottish literature today. —from Colin Bramwell's introduction

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