Poetry
His early poetry was in English, but after writing his first Gaelic poem, An Corra-Ghridheach ("The Heron"), he decided that it was far better than his English work, and resolved to continue using his native language. By the mid-1930s he was well known as a writer in this tongue.
His work in the field of Gaelic poetry at a time when very few writers of substance were working in Scottish Gaelic at all, has led to his being viewed as the father of the Scottish Gaelic renaissance. He was involved in the foundation and was a board member of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye.
His poetry articulated in Gaelic the crimes of the 20th century, and modernised and reinvigorated the language in the process, drawing clear and articulate analogies between such tragedies and acts of cultural genocide as the 19th century Scottish Highland Clearances, and the contemporary viciousness and injustice of events in places such as Biafra and Rwanda.
Major among his works was Hallaig, a meditative poem on the desolation associated with the Highland Clearances, named after the place of his early childhood. A film of the same name was made in 1984 by Timothy Neat: in this MacLean discusses the dominant influences on his poetry, with commentary by Iain Crichton Smith and Seamus Heaney, and substantial passages from the poem and other work, along with extracts of Gaelic song. The poem also forms part of the lyrics of Peter Maxwell-Davies' opera The Jacobite Rising; and MacLean's own reading of it in English and in Gaelic was sampled by Martyn Bennett in his album Bothy Culture for a track of the same name.
Read more about this topic: Sorley MacLean
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For poetry makes nothing happen:”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)