Re-Mapping the Language
Alec Finlay And Taylor Strickland: A Dialogue
Alec Finlay, Taylor Strickland
Alec Finlay: It’s historically telling that the contemporary Gaelic renaissance coincided with the 2014 Independence Referendum, and also with a movement we could refer to as ‘reading the Gaelic landscape’ – to adopt John Murray’s term – as a would-be nation sought new perspectives on its multilingual, multicultural, and ecological character. For us as poets, whether that means the campaign for 1,000 huts, or recovering the Gaelic colour spectrum, and the ecological implications it holds, or embracing a new lexicon, so that meall can be translated as tump or button, as well as lump.
My own memory associates the attempt to grasp new versions of the self, and culture, with the realisation I could sit on Dùn Cana and place myself within the space-time continuum of Sorley Maclean’s poem ‘Hallaig’. In my own work, translating Gaelic upland place-names was a way to give my disabled self a way to imaginatively access hills which I couldn’t hike. Rather than being viewed strictly as a historical tradition, and canon, Gaelic inspired and encouraged innovations in poetics and politics, including for non-Gaelic speakers, for instance, as a new source of imagery. To begin with, I’d like to place your work in this broader project and see whether you agree.
Taylor Strickland: A tantalizing idea, tapping into Dùn Cana! It is a kind of a topographical diving rod, isn’t it?
I suppose my new collection, Dwell Time, began with a similar idea: that place, both its conceptual and physical presence, yields an opportunity to connect and bear witness. Alec, you note that meall means ‘hillock’ and more, in which case those who have Gaelic, or any two languages, see more. Unpacking socio-environmental depth can open access to places. I really like that. But I soon found myself at odds with the hyper-local of the Gaelic landscape. As much as I desired it, I was rather more in Bernard O’Donaghue’s shoes, his ‘here nor there’. Dwell Time explores double in places. A bit like Plank’s wave-particle duality, bright sagebrush of Colorado’s steppeland in the book mutates into the dark heathery moorland of Hoy, the southern satellite isle of Orkney’s Mainland. It then mutates back… A namescape is one thing, and I can learn the language of a place to cultivate intimacy with it, but at the same time, weird ‘double exposures’ complicate place. I like that too, and it feels natural to me. One poem in the book couches valleys and cascades in a SQL script, the databasing language I used when I worked for a healthcare company. It seems impossible that a programming language can describe an environment, but SQL’s grammar is relational. Another kind of double exposure.
All language dislocates as much as it locates. When I first took an interest in Gaelic, I sought an exception to that rule, but now I don’t fight it. Things are open and permeable.
How does Gaelic contribute to a nationalist outlook? Hmm… That’s harder.
AF: Let’s turn to another political marker. I hadn’t anticipated a collection of versions of 18th century Gaelic poems would ever win a translation prize from the PBS. I’m reminded of your lines, cross-dressing Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, in which eros allows self and other to see one another differently and, perhaps, to parley a new political identity.
tearing off old shirts and everything just to dress ourselves in each other.
Gaelic seems to dress and undress skin, cloth, texture, and the landscape, be it variegated or pockled, in these brief reflections; there’s a liberty – some might say, a taking of liberties – in these approaches. But why now?
TS: It’s such an honour that Dastram made an impact, but it definitely took liberties. For sake of sociohistorical honesty, we should note that Gàidhealtachd (broadly, the Scottish Highlands, but traditionally, the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland) and the Scottish nation regularly gripe with each other… You bring up Somhairle MacGill-Eain and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. Well, the former, in English, reminds us that Gaelic is ‘threatened with extinction’, partly because of the ‘iniquities of land ownership’, with Gaeldom’s children being ‘bred for emigration’. The Scottish nation pays lip service to these issues. Zoom back to 1751, with the release of mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s Aiseirigh, and similar grievance is summarised by his accusation of ‘mìorun mòr nan Gall’, or the ‘great ill-will of the Lowlander’. Both attitudes continued during the 2014 Referendum: the Outer Hebrides, a Gaelic stronghold, voted ‘No’, I think, by 53%. It doesn’t mean they trust Westminster, but they do have a long-standing distrust of ‘the Scottish nation’.
Luckily the Gàidhealtachd is heterogynous and don’t all think alike. In fact, it’s heterogeneity that drove the creation of Dwell Time: a complex discordance unified by verse. Why now? Well, we should all grapple with the fact the heterogeneity is dying out. More languages are dying than persevering. Industrial agriculture increasingly utilizes intensive monocropping. Political discourse as a standard lacks complex nuance. Biodiversity is decreasing. Melody, harmony, and time signatures in music have simplified. Maybe they’re all coincidental trends, and maybe incidentally, some are benign, but together, if they are more than coincidental, they point to worrisome interventions in life’s complexity. Human beings, as a species, despise complexity: we seek coherence, control – solutions as part of our determination to survive, and many of those solutions are merely the act of simplifying tasks, which in turn become the management of randomness in any given environment. If randomness is kept to a minimum, so activities like eating and working become more predictable, and thus offer guarantees.
AF: Yes to complexity, and a poetics of witness which complexifies. One of the paradoxes of our culture – which I would still identify by using Momus’ term, ‘Scotlands’ – is the arc that runs from a vision of a heterogenous or ‘mongrel’ nation, which formed me, and then broke into shards in 2014, and, since then, an emphasis on specific identities, which like to dress as vividly heterogenous but, at the same time, have tended to become like so many quarrelling hill tribes. The loss of the naïve and idealistic sense we had pre-2014, of poetics as a contribution to the imagining into being of a civic nation called Scotlands is grievous. The multicultural was conceived of as one window, alongside another, the multilingual. In the same way, I perceive my work on a poetics of recuperation and disabled access as progressing in parallel with a poetics of ecological remediation. Recently we worked together to explore BSL as a way to translate Gaelic hill names, taking the meanings of topographical terms like ‘meall’ or ‘breac’ into the body
TS: My contribution with Evie Waddell to your Day of Access project was so inspiring. If we can find ways to enable access in the most rural of environments, and through poetry and multilingualism, it proves the importance of arts to government. I’m unabashedly in support of this nation you conceive of, Alec. The sociohistorical precedent is there, but there’s more. On a macro-governance level, smaller nation states with a democratic imperative – one that supports each individual’s capabilities – do better long-term than the bloated, top-heavy, power-hungry states do. A decade on from the Referendum, Scotland still asserts itself. But what would it do if independence were gained? The nation has an ongoing problem with excessive management, of land, of culture, which has come at the expense of both. Can poetry remind us of that?
It’s counterintuitive, and possibly dangerous, but I believe in complexity relative to environment. In Scotland let’s encourage Gaelic, Scots and English in our young people, even in new contact zones, where Gaelic never existed. I mean, why not? What is the problem with kids being trilingual in Shetland, for example? In Scotland, let’s breakup estates and return them to small-holdings, most of which are community operated.
Sounds complicated, but how much richer would be the outcome! Engaging with the Gaelic tradition is one small step toward rich complexity – it’s restitution, in fact. Moreover, Gaelic sociological concepts enrich the cultural conversation. For example ‘dùthchas’ (a word that bundles heritage, birthright and land) has deep relevance for governance, community and environment. We realize also that Gaeldom’s arts are rich. Let us diminish the culture no more.
Taylor Strickland is from Tallahassee, Florida. His latest book is Dwell Time (Tapsalteerie, 2025). His book Dastram/Delirium (Broken Sleep Books, 2023) was Scottish Poetry Book of the Year and a PBS Translation Choice. His poems have featured in Poetry London, the TLS, New Statesman, and elsewhere. He lives in Aberfeldy.
Alec Finlay (1966- ) is a poet and artist whose work crosses over a range of media and forms. In 2022 he completed I remember: Scotland’s Covid Memorial. His publications include Not Sealions But Lions by the Sea (2025), The Walkative Revolution (2025), descriptions (2022), and play my game (2023).
