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"An Leabhar Mòr: The Great Book of Gaelic"
Malcom MacLean & Theo Dorgan (eds.)
O’Brien Press, £39.99

O’Brien Press is to be congratulated on the production of such a beautiful book. It really is a pleasure to see the highest production standards being applied unstintingly. This is a reprint of a book first published in Great Britain by Cannongate in 2002. The book is well served by several good introductions from Malcolm MacLean, Duncan MacMillan, Colm Ó Baoill, Ronald Black and Theo Dorgan, who between them cover ancient and modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic poetry and visual art. The main body of the book is given over to presentation of the poems, or more exactly in many cases, excerpts of the poems, translations on the left hand page and accompanying visual art on the right hand page. The artworks have been carefully chosen so that they are either directly influenced by the poem they stand in juxtaposition with, or they share some common aspect of influence.

The book contains a broad sweep of the best poems in Irish and Scottish Gaelic from the anonymous texts of the 6th – 9th centuries, the high poets of the Gaelic courts and poems of patronage, the wandering bards of the 18th century, the poets of the early to mid 20th century and contemporary poets. In terms of volume, the skew is towards the more modern work, perhaps not unsurprisingly given the method of nomination used, where fifteen contemporary poets from each territory had one poem each included and were asked to nominate two others. However, this is one of the strengths of the book. It allows a generous and broad taste of what is being written now and what has been written recently, but also places that work within the wider linguistic tradition that influenced it.

This book will serve as a good introduction to the long and valuable tradition of Gaelic poetry while also demonstrating the vibrancy of the new and recent writing. On the Irish side, many familiar poems present themselves ‘Dubh’ by Nuala Ní Dhomnaill, for instance, her great poem on the fall of Srebrenica, which only really works in Irish, using as it does the sound of the word ‘dubh’ (black) to imitate the whizzing of bullets throughout the piece. Gearóid MacLochlainn is represented, but I really wish ‘Teanga’ had been used, with its pulsing rhythms reminiscent of rap. MacLochlainn is one of the most exciting and experimental of the new Irish poets and it would have been good to bring that out more. I wondered also if there was an opportunity to add a poet or two who had emerged since the first edition of 2002. Perhaps an opportunity has been missed there. Incidentally, one notes that Biddy Jenkinson’s work is accompanied by a verse translation. Jenkinson has long refused to have her work translated in print in Ireland and one wonders if this shows some relaxing of that position or whether it is an accidental result of reprinting a book originally published in Great Britain.

I found much to admire in the new Scottish Gaelic writers also, although I must confess that I was ignorant of many of them up to now. Anna C. Frater whose work is new to me struck me with her rhythmic lyricism and Rody Gorman whose work I did know, and some of whose poems I have translated in the past, is represented by an experimental macaronic. If these poets are representative of the breadth and range of that generation, then poetry in Scottish Gaelic is a healthy as its Irish counterpart.

My quibbles with the book amount to minor annoyance at the necessity of relegating sections of the work (sometimes more than half the poem) to an appendix. I can see why it was done, but surely a more sensible strategy might have been to present the Gaelic on the page facing the artwork and relegate the translation to the appendix if necessary. The other quibble is what appears to be an uncharacteristic slip in Theo Dorgan’s Introduction regarding Micheál Ó hAirtnéide and Caitlín Maude, who he says ‘carry the mid-century’. Surely his timeline is a little off here, since both of those published their debut collections in 1975. If we consider that the mid-century was punctuated by debut collections by Máirtin Ó Direáin (Coinnle Geala, 1942), Seán Ó Ríordáin (Eireaball Spideoige, 1952), Máire Mhac an tSaoi (Margadh na Saoire, 1956) and Seán Ó Tuama (Faoileán na Beatha, 1961). Perhaps these poets (even Ó Tuama is a stretch) might be more worthy of that description.

These minor criticisms aside, I think it’s a valuable and gorgeous book and I wish its reissue every success.