I'm here today to talk very briefly about some of the poetry which has been written in the last
30 or 40 years in Scottish Gaelic by people who have chosen to learn the language as adults.
Scottish Gaelic ended the 20th century in a highly precarious position with less than 60,000 speakers.
Nevertheless, the last century saw an astonishing flowering of poetry written in the language.
The most famous Gaelic poet of the 20th century was Solly McLane, who died in 1996.
His powerful body of work is undoubtedly of European stature.
Further, he was instrumental in opening up Gallic poetry to concerns beyond the Highlands and Islands,
taking it beyond traditional forms, metres and subject matter.
This is particularly apparent in the anguished Donda ever poems to ever published in 1943,
in which the poet agonised between the competing demands of love and conscience.
As Europe exploded into nightmarish catastrophe.
One of Mcclane's lesser known contributions was to encourage the institution of the Higher Gaelic for Learners exam,
which helps to bring learners into the language and to approach fluency.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, learners have emerged who have gone on to produce a substantial output of poetry in Gaelic.
Then as a Gallic,
I have been minded to have written poetry in the language have very largely continued the innovative agenda set by McLane and his successors.
That is to say they have usually, but not without exception, written free verse, intended to be spoken rather than sung,
and have brought a global perspective into Gallic poetry, often with a sharp political edge.
They have shied away from the traditional genre's bounds to highland life, such as the work songs associated with rowing or gathering kelp.
Largely, I suspect, to avoid the taint of pastiche.
The learner poet with the most radical agenda for the language is, in my opinion, the academic and novelist Christopher White, who was born in 1952.
I'll be reading one of White's poems out shortly. He goes beyond the old innovators of the last century, such as McLane,
boldly removing the centripetal urge to relate the concerns of the world back to Scotland.
His poetry is often filled with the atmosphere of Italy, where he lived and worked for some years.
He attempts, amongst other things, Browning esque monologues in the voices of Italian artists.
His poetry is thus overtly highly educated, even highbrow.
It also has a satirical bent, as white is much concerned with issues of Scottish identity,
but is inclined to think about these issues in the widest and most post-modern terms possible.
I think it's justified here to say that it has been felt that some of his work has on occasion failed to come off.
The academic and fellow Gallic poet Ronald Black notes that some of Christopher White's earlier poems, they're wonderfully complex,
are not intelligible to the ordinary Gallic speaking reader without reference to the English translation.
The poem I'm going to read today is called and Lucky Enough The Chinese Beetle and is one of several programmatic piece pieces in White's work.
It is an exotic horticultural fable with an allegorical moral.
The poem, which is an UN rhyming lyric, describes a particular species of apple to be found in the mountains of China.
The taste and sheen of which are so exquisite that emperors used to prized them highly and served them at feasts and banquets.
But the poet tells us these apples did not really have the taste of apples.
Rather, a variety of beetle used to lay its eggs in each apple.
And after the young beetles had hatched and flown away, the fruit was left with an extraordinarily delightful flavour and perfume.
That the poet concludes triumphantly in his last line, is what he does with Gallic.
Whilst garlic is efficient here is a mysterious and precious commodity which should be preserved and prized at faraway centres of power.
London and Edinburgh.
Perhaps it's not impossible to feel that this playful and urbane poem teeters uncomfortably on the edge of sumptuousness by its forthcoming memoirs,
by the way, a provisionally entitled Being the Chinese Beatle.
But I quote the poem here as an example of the richness and sense of adventure currently to be found within the work of learners of Gallic,
even at a time when the language is more vulnerable than ever before.
And here is the poem in the original.
And they're lucky in the election early to hear that senior U.S. Senator Hanson-Young on how should the UN remain
unabashed touch not skimpy ethnic input in the Hanukkah mosque and overdrinking of its cantata exceptions.
Goodman and Senators Board. A college era blast in the locker.
Let me go to Korea. Christian and I have our crew.
And then candidate sarcophagus under a kimchi and Korea.
Commonly around the fold. A high school project encounter a school yard mess and share them with a ski homer.
Him.
He is Chekov Carmack, who had a lot of fun to now ask Leo O'Mara and Ian all spoke of a lot of actually Kate as scholar and is guardian of the coach.
To get a final. See Shin.
A new militia. Common shift.