Dares Paradise - (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation) by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Two long poems by eighteenth-century Scottish Gaelic poet, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, revived and reintroduced for twenty-first century Anglophone readers

Little of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's biography can be confirmed other than his work as a teacher in Scotland's Ardnamurchan Peninsula and his role as a captain in the 1745 Jacobite Uprising. What we do have is his poetry--one volume self-published in 1751, the first nonreligious work to be published in any of the Celtic languages. Dares Paradise presents two long poems by mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, newly translated by Taylor Strickland. In his translation, Strickland--himself a poet--takes a subversive approach, writing in a transatlantic English idiom with Scots and Gaelic inflections. This is mac Mhaighstir Alasdair for the twenty-first century Anglophone reader.

The poems offer a rare pre- and post-battle perspective on a world, and a language, at risk of disappearing. The first, "Allt an t-Siùcair," is a lyrical celebration of place, a vivid evocation of the landscape of the peninsula at Britain's westernmost edge. The second, "Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill," considered mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's masterpiece, conjures instead a placelessness, recounting an epic sea journey from the Hebridean island of South Uist to Ireland that can be read as an allegory for persistence. For both poems, the English translation and Gaelic original appear on facing pages.

Review Quotes

"[Dares Paradise] reads like a love letter to Scottish Gaelic. . . . The words often seem to vibrate, as if in some attempt to lift themselves from the page, needing to be spoken. . . . Strickland ultimately provides a shiny new set of coordinates for Scotland on the global literary map, marking another great historical text that has emerged from its lands."---Oscar Duffield, Asymptote

About the Author

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c1698-c1770), also known as Alexander MacDonald, was a Scottish Gaelic poet, lexicographer, military officer, and Gaelic language tutor to Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie." Taylor Strickland is an award-winning poet and translator whose most recent book is Dwell Time. His collection Dastram/Delirium won the Saltire Society Award for Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.