Rody’s adventures in Nova Scotia

Skye-based poet and translator RODY GORMAN was the inaugural recipient of a HI~Arts Writer’s Award this year, and used it to travel to Canada. Rody reports on his transatlantic trip, where writing in ‘Gaylick’ buys you extra library time, moose roast is served up for dinner, and bridges go on long enough to write whole poems.

I RECEIVED a Writers Award from HI~Arts in July 2003 which enabled me to travel to Canada in November to read my work.

Being interviewed in the studios of CBC in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on my first full day in the province, I was struck by the genuine interest amongst staff in my own Gaelic translations of the great New Brunswick poet Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983), which was not a topic I expected to be discussing live on radio at breakfast time.

I did a second radio interview that day, from Dalhousie University (there are 12 universities in Nova Scotia), with Tony Seed, editor and publisher of Shunpilking and Mac-talla, and Joe Murphy, New Brunswick Francophile and Gaelic tutor at St. Mary’s University. The conversation was scheduled to last an hour and went on for two and a half (recorded).

I read at St Mary’s that night, where I met with Lewis MacKinnon, President  of the Gaelic Council of Nova Scotia, who started speaking Gaelic to his father Joe – from Inverness, Cape Breton – only after the death of his granduncle.

I travelled to Prince Edward Island the following day, where I stayed with Ed MacDonald, Professor of History at the University in Charlottetown. Ed is also a poet, who has written the following:

Cardigan Bay

There’s a white boat and a full moon
on the dark mirror of the bay.
It would break your heart to leave this place
but it breaks your heart to stay.

Small secrets come and go
on the pendulum of the tide
and in the slow sweep of the Panmure Light.
But the bay’s mouth is wide

enough to swallow up a life
and carry it far along
beyond the reach of Panmure’s light
though the tide’s pull is strong.

There’s a white boat and a full moon
and a fire on the beach
and the boy’s  face in the flickering light
is mine but it’s out of reach.

While staying in Ed and his wife Sheila’s house I came across English translations of Icelandic Hámaval (Viking Sayings in verse form) which I translated into Gaelic. When I was typing them in the public library at the Confederation Arts Centre in Charlottetown, I was approached by an assistant who told me that my time on the work station was almost up.

She looked at the screen and said “Omigod, you’re not writing in English!” “No”, I said “I’m writing in Gaelic”. “You’re writing in Gaylick!” she said, “Just you take all the time in the world!” I also managed some new poems and translations of the poet from the island, Frank Ledwell as well as Leonard Cohen and Eli Mandel.

When I was in Antigonish at dinner with Professor Kenneth Nilsen, I excused myself to write down a poem based on something he had just said, which I read at St. Francis Xavier University at a public reading about 20 minutes later. A young man came into the bar later, telling everyboy with great excitement that he’d just received a five dollar fine on the spot for playing his fiddle on campus.

I stayed with Jim Watson and Frances MacEachen in Cape Breton where we discussed developing the quarterly Am Bràighe, which they edit and publish, into a pan-Gaelic magazine. As the reading I was to give at the Highland Village, Iona, was cancelled due to the death of the director of the centre, Jim took me to visit Johnny Williams (Johnny Aonghais nam Breug) of Melford, Inverness County.

Johnny Williams is as powerful a Gaelic speaker and tradition bearer as you’ll find, but he’s 90 years old. Jim drove me to a reading I gave on Sunday at University College Cape Breton in Sydney and on the way home was telling me about John MacLennan, Gaelic-speaker from, I think, Caledonia, Prince Edward island. MacLennan was known as ‘Moose’ on account of his massive build but when Jim spoke to him it was in a hospital with most of his limbs gone after an accident. He spoke Gaelic cheerfully enough to the end.

For dinner that night, Frances had prepared moose roast. Frances works as Culture Officer at the Provincial Government and her duties include liasing with Highland Council under a Memorandum of Agreement. Whatever emerges out of that will not be as a result of any lack of ambition or imagination on Frances’ part.

I wrote the following poem, almost in its entirety, travelling over Confederation Bridge, which extends for 14 kilometres across the sea From Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick. There can’t be many bridges where you can do that.

Do Phercy ‘s Iain Mac a’ Phearsain / For Percy and Iain MacPherson

Ged nach do thachair mi ruibh,
Chuala mi tarraing oirbh mar an duine mu dheireadh
Aig an robh Gàidhlig an Eilein
Agus, mar sin dheth,
Leig mi deir no dhà nuair a dh’fhairich mi ‘n uair sin
Gun robh sibh air caochladh.

I never met you yet
I heard about you as last of the line
of native speakers belonging to the Island
and so
I shed a tear or two
when I heard you died.

Is cha d’fhuair mi ‘n tràth riamh
An aona chuid mo bheannachd a chur oirbh
No soraidh slàn fhàgail agaibh
Ach coma leat dheth – cha b’ ann an-diugh
No ‘n-dè a mhothaich mi don ghràbhaladh –
Aig fois lis an Tighearna;
Gus am bris an latha –
Mu choinneimh bùth an luchd-tiodhlcaidj
Eadar an rathad-ùrach
Agus an rathad-dubh.

All of this meant
I said neither
hello nor goodbye, ever
but never mind – wasn’t yesterday
I first saw that inscription outside
the monumental mason store –
Until the day breaks;
Pray for us –
between the shunpike
and the divided highway.

Là-Cuimhneachaidh/Remembrance Day 2003

Rody Gorman was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1960 and now lives in the Isle of Skye, Scotland. He has published the poetry collections Fax and Other Poems (Polygon, Edinburgh, 1996); Cùis-Ghaoil (diehard, Edinburgh, 1999); Bealach Garbh (Coiscéim, Dublin, 1999);  Air a’ Charbad fo Thalamh/On the Underground (Polygon, 2000) and Naomhóga na Laoi (Coiscéim, 2003) in English, Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

He also has forthcoming collections from diehard (Taaaaaaadhaaaaaaal!) and from Lapwing in Belfast (Tóithín ag Tláithínteacht) in 2004. He has worked as writing fellow at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye and at University College Cork and is editor of the annual Irish and Scottish Gaelic poetry magazine An Guth and the companion anthology Craobh. Among his Gaelic translations are works by Amichai, Armitage, Holub, Longley and Popa and his English translations include the poetry of Sorley MacLean.