The Wigtown Poetry Competition

Gaelic Judge’s Report

Although the number of Gaelic submissions received for the Wigtown Poetry Competition 2006, the most lucrative of its kind in Scotland, was disappointing, the standard was generally satisfying. As an impartial and a sagacious judge, one is, of course, always looking for material to excite admiration and, at its best, downright envy.

Some submissions, I feel it should be said, display a certain want of command of Gaelic - not that even the most accomplished poem achieves complete mastery of language and that's no bad thing – and recall the description by the scholar John MacInnes of certain poems 'losing something in the original'.

Discarding also, after due consideration, pieces of writing which in some cases amounted to no more than sociolinguistic commentary and in other cases to song but not, I think, to poetry, I would report as follows.

The poems described in this paragraph constitute a long shortlist, as it were. ‘ Dè man a tha sin dhut?’ (Richard Cox), a mild enough invective, is, nevertheless, full of resignation, which could make it an apostrophe to Gaelic itself and echoes poetry from the 1960s with its imagery of impediments imposed on speech by faith.

Allowing for prejudice against a centred text in an ostentatious font, ‘Ómra Buí’ in Irish Gaelic, is a poem of moment, recalling native and exotic inheritances, with grace, fluidity, rhythm and accessibility. ‘An Clárú’ by the same competitor is resonant also, describing the tension between numbness and the power of the pen and ‘Féileacán na Nollag’, (all by Ciaran Mac Aibhistin) is addressed to a butterfly reproached for having transgressed by its own innate behaviour.

Despite its predictable ending, ‘Dàn’ (Doanld Murray) is a welcome lament in Gaelic for the waning of Marxism, which has a native resonance and correlative. Another poem 'Tùs na h-Èise’ (Martin McIntyre) starts off strongly but seems to have been abandoned – as are all poems according to Paul Valéry – at perhaps the wrong juncture. The incantatory piece ‘Air feadh na h-oidhche’ (Helen Fraser) and ‘Air a’ chladach’ (Peter Hill) both belong to the category of traditional verse perhaps not fully realised for the want of (traditional) melody as accompaniment. ‘Mnemosyne’ and ‘Thetys' (both Mona Claudia Striewe) are initially promising and resonant and in 'Dì-chadal' (Niall Bartlett) ennui is powerfully invoked, and the notion of television images consisting of nothing but ‘daoine a’ reic Crìosd’ (people selling Christ) is particularly striking.

The group for ultimate consideration consists of the following: Despite slight reservations about somewhat faltering Gaelic usage, 'Anna' (Kevin Murphy) is a powerful love lament. ‘Seann bhun sgoil’ (Aonghas MacNeacal) is similarly evocative. ‘Buthaidean’ (Niall O’Gallagher) is of all submissions the most technically ambitious and controlled without directly assimilating an established form. The winning poem, however, is 'An fhìor bheinn' (Aonghas MacNeacal) which powerfully combines native imagery, memory, perceptions of reality and what Yeats called ‘the fascination of what’s difficult’.

My thanks to all those who submitted work for Wigtown Poetry Competition 2006. Opportunities of this kind are all to rare – not just in Gaelic - and if this particular opportunity acts as an incentive and a means of recognition (and publication) for new poetry – again, not just in Gaelic - it deserves our full support. Thanks in particular to Andrew Forster and to the organisers of the competition for inviting me to judge the Gaelic entries and to participate in the launch and the prizegiving ceremony.

Rody Gorman

In association with the Scottish Poetry Library
and the Sunday Herald