Stèisean [Dàin – Poems in Gaelic and English]

by Angus Peter Campbell (Contributor)

Fifty-nine new poems from award-winning writer Angus Peter Campbell. These poignant and beautifully crafted poems were originally created while in residence in a thatched house in his native South Uist. They move across time and space like a radio dial between global stations, sometimes catching the indigenous, sometimes the marvellous and comic. Poems that celebrate the places and voices located somewhere between Luxembourg and Lyons.

Genres: Poetry

143 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Angus Peter Campbell (b. 1952) is an award-winning Scottish poet, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and actor. He writes in Gaelic as Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book after hearing Angus Peter Campbell reading from it in Edinburgh. I also liked the fact that it had largely been written while he was in South Uist as I can picture the place having worked there for a couple of weeks many years ago. The book is a lovely edition, with poems in Gaelic and English, the translations being done by Angus Peter Campbell himself. He has some fun with this, such as in Cappuccino Fuar (Cold Cappuccino), which is a very short Gaelic poem, and a very long English poem as there just aren't the required words.

Many of the poems are succinct and to the point, and some of these are the ones with the most going on in them. I have gone back and read "Ferret" and "Upstairs" again several times as they left me in contemplative, a slightly melancholy frame of mind, and the pages with "Tosaraidh Brae"and "The Sgumban" have also got the corners folded down so that I can find them again.

For me it was a treat to try (probably very unsuccessfully) to read the Gaelic verse phonetically before tackling the English, and now that I've started taking some Gaelic lessons, I'll try again in a few weeks.