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I'm here today to talk very briefly about some of the poetry which has been written in the last

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30 or 40 years in Scottish Gaelic by people who have chosen to learn the language as adults.

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Scottish Gaelic ended the 20th century in a highly precarious position with less than 60,000 speakers.

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Nevertheless, the last century saw an astonishing flowering of poetry written in the language.

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The most famous Gaelic poet of the 20th century was Solly McLane, who died in 1996.

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His powerful body of work is undoubtedly of European stature.

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Further, he was instrumental in opening up Gallic poetry to concerns beyond the Highlands and Islands,

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taking it beyond traditional forms, metres and subject matter.

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This is particularly apparent in the anguished Donda ever poems to ever published in 1943,

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in which the poet agonised between the competing demands of love and conscience.

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As Europe exploded into nightmarish catastrophe.

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One of Mcclane's lesser known contributions was to encourage the institution of the Higher Gaelic for Learners exam,

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which helps to bring learners into the language and to approach fluency.

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In the last quarter of the 20th century, learners have emerged who have gone on to produce a substantial output of poetry in Gaelic.

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Then as a Gallic,

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I have been minded to have written poetry in the language have very largely continued the innovative agenda set by McLane and his successors.

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That is to say they have usually, but not without exception, written free verse, intended to be spoken rather than sung,

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and have brought a global perspective into Gallic poetry, often with a sharp political edge.

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They have shied away from the traditional genre's bounds to highland life, such as the work songs associated with rowing or gathering kelp.

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Largely, I suspect, to avoid the taint of pastiche.

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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.

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I'll be reading one of White's poems out shortly. He goes beyond the old innovators of the last century, such as McLane,

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boldly removing the centripetal urge to relate the concerns of the world back to Scotland.

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His poetry is often filled with the atmosphere of Italy, where he lived and worked for some years.

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He attempts, amongst other things, Browning esque monologues in the voices of Italian artists.

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His poetry is thus overtly highly educated, even highbrow.

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It also has a satirical bent, as white is much concerned with issues of Scottish identity,

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but is inclined to think about these issues in the widest and most post-modern terms possible.

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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.

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The academic and fellow Gallic poet Ronald Black notes that some of Christopher White's earlier poems, they're wonderfully complex,

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are not intelligible to the ordinary Gallic speaking reader without reference to the English translation.

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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.

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It is an exotic horticultural fable with an allegorical moral.

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The poem, which is an UN rhyming lyric, describes a particular species of apple to be found in the mountains of China.

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The taste and sheen of which are so exquisite that emperors used to prized them highly and served them at feasts and banquets.

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But the poet tells us these apples did not really have the taste of apples.

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Rather, a variety of beetle used to lay its eggs in each apple.

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And after the young beetles had hatched and flown away, the fruit was left with an extraordinarily delightful flavour and perfume.

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That the poet concludes triumphantly in his last line, is what he does with Gallic.

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Whilst garlic is efficient here is a mysterious and precious commodity which should be preserved and prized at faraway centres of power.

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London and Edinburgh.

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Perhaps it's not impossible to feel that this playful and urbane poem teeters uncomfortably on the edge of sumptuousness by its forthcoming memoirs,

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by the way, a provisionally entitled Being the Chinese Beatle.

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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,

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even at a time when the language is more vulnerable than ever before.

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And here is the poem in the original.

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And they're lucky in the election early to hear that senior U.S. Senator Hanson-Young on how should the UN remain

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unabashed touch not skimpy ethnic input in the Hanukkah mosque and overdrinking of its cantata exceptions.

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Goodman and Senators Board. A college era blast in the locker.

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Let me go to Korea. Christian and I have our crew.

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And then candidate sarcophagus under a kimchi and Korea.

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Commonly around the fold. A high school project encounter a school yard mess and share them with a ski homer.

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Him.

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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.

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To get a final. See Shin.

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A new militia. Common shift.