MAOILIOS CAIMBEUL
About Maoilios Caimbeul
Maoilios Caimbeul (Myles Campbell) is a Gaelic poet who lives on Skye, where he was born in 1944. After graduation from Edinburgh University, where his Gaelic tutor was the legendary William Matheson, Myles became a Gaelic teacher in Mull and later in Gairloch. Since retiring from teaching in 2004, he has been busy writing for schools, editing and doing residencies – including a period as writer-in-residence at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in 2008, where he is currently working as a creative writing tutor. He has published five poetry collections, his work has been widely anthologised in bilingual editions, and is well represented in An Tuil, the definitive anthology of twentieth-century Gaelic poetry. His work has won many awards, the last being the Wigtown Gaelic prize in 2008.
Praise for The Two Sides of the Pass
‘Leabhar àlainn a tha seo, far a bheil conaltradh eadar dà bhàrd, dà chànan agus fillidhean de dh’eachdraidh is eòlas, gar treòrachadh – le fialaidheachd mac-meanmna, agus mion-aire air tuairisgeul is tachartas – gu slighe tro mhòr-thìrean is millennia agus thar bhealaichean, le cùram, sonas agus brìgh, a’ toirt nan sgìre beò, an cruth is coimhearsnachd, ann an snìomh eagarach de dhearcnachd is cuimhne. Gun dàn ann nach eil beò le fonn is faireachadh, tha saidhbhreas àraid paisgte anns na duilleagan torrach seo.’
‘This is a beautiful book, where a dialogue between two poets, two languages and layers of history and experience, draw us – with imaginative generosity, and close attention to impression or event – on a journey across continents, millennia, through passes, with care, warmth and substance, energising their terrain, its topography and people, in a subtle twining of observation and memory. Every poem is alive with music and feeling: a singular richness adorns these fertile pages.’
Aonghas Macneacail
‘Two sides of the pass, two languages, two poetic sensibilities – and one uniquely appealing poetry collection. Bridging the symbolic pass are Gaeldom’s most under-appreciated bard, the excellent Maoilios Caimbeul, and his near-neighbour, the keen-eyed relative newcomer, Mark O. Goodwin. Between them they give harmonic voice to a rich and multifaceted world. Their masterfully composed landscape will feel like a place of homecoming to native and stranger alike. You’ll find yourself wandering through these poems alive to fresh ideas like the narrator of the verbal tour de force that is ‘Skye/An t-Eilean Sgitheanach’, ultimately responding to the vital miracle and sheer contingency of life’s own poetic dialogue with the words ‘tapadh leat’ – ‘thank you’. It’s a long time since the islands gave us such an accessible and life-enriching collection.’ Kevin MacNeil
'Eòghann Mac Colla has made a key contribution to developing contemporary Gaelic visual art. His contribution to The Two Sides of the Pass is to be welcomed.’ Murdo Macdonald, Professor of History of Scottish Art, University of Dundee
An interview with Maoilios Caimbeul
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?
From the age of 12 I used to scribble verses in English. Although Gaelic was the language of the home and community in Skye and Lewis at that time, Gaelic medium education was still in the future. The language of education was English, the language of the heart was Gaelic. Which should a poet use? Ideally the two should merge with each other, shouldn’t they? As it was, I could speak and read Gaelic but not write in it until I was in my mid to late twenties. In doing so I found a new freedom. My first Gaelic poem was published in Derick Thompson’s Gairm magazine in 1974 when I was 30. At last my own language could become the language of the heart and of the intellect.
In my teens I greatly admired Keats and Coleridge and read Wordsworth. I read contemporary English poetry and still admire Eliot and Yeats. Gaelic poetry was not available to me until I attended night school in my mid twenties. Both Sorley MacLean’s and Derick Thompon’s I found inspirational, and of the earlier poets William Ross’s and Alexander MacDonald’s. I have a special love for Gaelic song and nothing compares with the melding of poetry and melody in the best Gaelic songs.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind this work in particular? And about what you were trying to achieve; what ideas you were trying to convey?
For me, personally, there is a Gaelic hinterland, as there is, I think, for anyone who has been brought up as a Gaelic-speaking Highlander (or in any particular culture). This consists of the language, certainly, but it’s much more than that. It’s everything that comes under the umbrella of ‘culture’ – the feel and love for the land, the belief system, the nuances of reference, the songs and lots more – the feeling one has from the inside for the values of what one is part of. So, as I experience the loss of this culture, from the inside out, as the language appears to move slowly to extinction, I sometimes wonder what it must feel like for people with a different culture coming to live in the area, to experience the loss of a culture from the outside coming in, as it were.
This was my motivation for The Two Sides of the Pass. I met Mark at a creative writing class soon after my return to Skye in 1992 and immediately recognised the fine quality of his work. It wasn’t, however, until 2006 that the idea for the book came to us, and it was over a pint in a pub in Portree after having been to an event in the An Tuireann Arts Centre. Because of Mark’s sensibility and his empathy with the local culture, I knew as soon as the idea came to us that it was something worth trying; namely, to have a poetic dialogue between two sensibilities, the inside of the coat addressing outside, as it were. That is what we attempted. How successful we were, the reader must judge
How do you go about the work of translation?
Translating poetry presents major difficulties, as one would and should expect. All one can hope for in the end is an approximation of what the other has said. This is because every word in every language has its own history of meaning and meanings and also every language has its own peculiar idiom. Every word has its own peculiar emotional weight as well which has developed within the network of associations belonging to its own language. Add to this the differences of sound and one gets a glimpse of the problem.
In the face of this, one can go from the extreme of a very ‘literal’ translation to the other of a very free translation. I tried to come somewhere in between. In order to convey the same meaning from one language to another, it is quite often necessary to translate from one idiom to a quite different idiom, while still conveying what the author intended.
What difficulties, if any, did you encounter when translating Mark’s work?
The better the poetry is, the more difficult it is to translate, and I can assure you that Mark’s was very difficult to translate. Let me just take one very fine poem, ‘Glenhinnisdal’ and illustrate one or two of the problems. It starts, Glenhinnisdal cups and echoes / the sounds of our lives here,... This sounds fine in English but it just cannot be literally translated into Gaelic. For a start there is no verb ‘cups’ in this sense in Gaelic and neither is there a verb ‘echo’. Instead Gaelic uses the noun ‘mac-talla’, literally, ‘son of the rock’ to express the same idea.
So my attempted translation goes like this: Cuachan Ghleann Hinneasdail, mic-talla / fuaimean ar beatha an seo,... Of which a ‘literal’ translation goes something like this: The cups/hollows of Glenhinnisdal, echoes / of the sounds of our lives here,...
But think also that the main dictionary meanings of ‘cuach’ are 1. Drinking cup, bowl, goblet 2. Coil, fold, plait 3. Curl, curl of hair 4. Hollow or bosom of hill 5. Hollow part of a bird’s nest
and it becomes clear why I enclosed ‘literal’ with inverted commas. There is no such thing as a literal translation.
How do you go about creating your voice on the page?
I look on the ‘voice’ in poetry as the best expression of what one wants to say. But didn’t Chaucer say something like, The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. I have lived long enough to know the difficulties of expressing something perfectly! It is a craft and it has to be learned but, even then, there has to be something that you dearly want to express and which comes from the heart. If one has these two things, the craft and what longs to be said, the voice will take care of itself.
How and when do you write?
When the spirit moves me. There has to be, of course, a hinterland and a fertilising and preparation of the soil which can go on for years and years and then the tree grows and the leaves fall off, naturally one hopes. When some leaves finally fall, they usually fall in an hour or two and I usually leave them where they fall, although sometimes I will go back and burn one or two, or place them in a different pattern
What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?
I read poetry and non-fiction mainly and the occasional novel. I’m interested in philosophy, science and the interface between science and religion, and I have great interest in recent developments in cosmology. I have been re-reading Just Six Numbers, the Deep Forces that Shape the Universe by Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. It’s a fascinating book well worth reading. Of recent Gaelic poetry (but available in translation) that I’ve read recently, I would recommend Derick Thomson’s Sùil air Fàire / Surveying the Horizon; Soirbheas / Fair Wind by Meg Bateman; laoidh an donais òig / hymn to a young demon by Aonghas MacNeacail and the wonderfully erudite edition of Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir edited by Christopher Whyte.
