‘Many things caught my attention during my trips. I managed to capture some of these in poems’
Poet inspired by Covid publishes work in Welsh and Catalan to take Gaelic to a wider audience
When he was a boy, Martin Macintyre was fascinated to hear his father speaking in another language when they came off the ferry on holiday in the Hebrides.
Now he’s spreading the Gaelic language of his forebears thousands of miles beyond the islands where he first became aware of Scotland’s ancient tongue.
“It was intriguing because there was this side to him that we weren’t exposed to at home,” said the 58-year-old poet. “We would come off the ferry late at night and go into his uncle’s thatched cottage on South Uist without any electricity. His uncle wasn’t comfortable speaking English and so my father sort of moved into another world. I was always intrigued by it.”
By the time he was leaving high school in Lenzie to study at St Andrews University, Martin had taught himself Gaelic, crashing an O Grade in the subject and embarking on the first steps down a road that will this week see him publish a collection of Gaelic poetry translated into two neighbouring languages, many miles from the thatched cottage where his imagination first took flight.
Running Between Two Dragons is a collection of 52 poems that have been translated into Welsh and Catalan by leading lights of each language’s literary scenes.
They will be published in four languages, including English, next week. The feat is a first for Gaelic writing.
The pieces took form as Martin travelled through Catalonia and Wales in 2019 and 2020, and the dragon motif is central to the collection – both the Welsh emblem familiar to millions of people on its flag, and Catalonia’s famous beast, which was slain by Sant Jordi, as St George is known in Catalan.
Martin’s work has been translated into Welsh by former National Poet of Wales, Ifor ap Glyn, and into Catalan by poet and translator Noèlia Diaz Vicedo, from the University of the Balearic Islands on Majorca.
The three poets will come together to launch the book in Edinburgh on Friday, reading a selection of poems in all four languages.
Martin said: “It takes Gaelic poetry to a wider audience. If I was bold enough to write about the reflections and thoughts and feelings I was experiencing in their country, then I thought it was reasonable for these people to be able to access them in their own language.
“Noèlia Diaz Vicedo and Ifor ap Glyn generously opened those doors for us. And they know their dragons.”
As for the significance of the translations from Gaelic to Catalan and Welsh, Martin said: “Gaelic as a language is on the same branch of the tree as Catalan and Welsh. So the Celtic language and the Italic languages sit on the same branch of the European linguistic tree, whereas English sits over on the other side beside the Germanic languages.
“There are a lot of words in common between the languages, words that aren’t shared with English.”
The words of Martin’s poems capture a particular period of time, one that has become increasingly unbelievable the further away we move from it.
There’s the piece about Boris Johnson, entitled The Prime Minister’s Prison. There’s one about the anticipation of attending the Wales v Scotland rugby international in Cardiff that was postponed as Covid took grip in the UK in spring 2020.
Another is about the peculiar sight of an ebullient Majorcan hotelier meeting and greeting guests wearing a face mask as the country emerged from the first lockdown.
“The world changed overnight and that’s reflected in the collection. It captures a particular time in history,” said Martin. “Many things caught my attention during my journeys, and I managed to capture some of these in poems that I was eventually satisfied with. Poem after poem arrived, inspired by what I was seeing.”
Martin, who lives in Edinburgh with wife Annemarie, taught his two children Gaelic as their first language. The new collection is his third book of poems, in addition to his eight novels, and he is following in the footsteps of a Gaelic literary titan in his role as the first Gaelic Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University.
“Writers like Sorley Maclean have been writers in residence for the whole university, but this is the first time they have ever had a specific Gaelic writer in residence. It’s an honour, and also means that Gaelic has some degree of parity with English.”
When not writing, he works as an on-call GP in Midlothian. He sees parallels between his two professional identities.
“They’re complementary,” he said. “The human condition is at the heart of both. My job as an out-of-hours GP is reactive and I have to do that with a degree of skill and sensitivity. And the narrative that you get from patients in a consultation is in some ways akin to the narrative you can create on the blank page. I think one is more reactive and one is more creative, but they complement one other.”
Martin has taken the words his father Peter spoke on arriving at the family cottage in the 1970s on a journey far beyond the Uists. What would his late dad have made of it all?
“Once he realised the language was important to me he was incredibly supportive,” he said. “He and I spoke only Gaelic to each other for the last 20 years of his life. He came to all my launches before he died in his 80s in 2008.
“The development of the language from the early-80s challenged his ideas about the future of the language. I think he would be very proud.”