Lewis inspired Makar aims to make a mark

​The 45-year-old from Shader, Barvas, a senior lecturer in literature at St Andrews University, told the Gazette it was a “huge honour” to become Scotland’s fifth Makar, and spoke of his hopes for the platform it would give Gaelic and of the influence that Lewis and the language have had on him.

Dr Mackay will have a three-year tenure and follows Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay and Kathleen Jamie into the role, which will see him tasked with writing poems on significant national events.“It’s a big challenge. I have to be good. I have to write poems as well as I can.”

There will be three or four poems a year, on topics agreed with the Scottish Government, whenever there “might be the need for something grand” and “a bit of a conversation” around a topic.

The previous two Makars were tasked to write poems about bridges, which begs the question: what about a poem on the new CalMac ferry?

“The most controversial poem I could write,” he laughed. “It would be a very long poem. It might never, ever finish. I keep promising the delivery of the poem…”

During his tenure, Dr Mackay intends to focus on “the multi-lingual nature of Scotland, not just the traditional languages of Gaelic, English and Scots” and has a rich view of language as he also speaks a number of foreign languages, including Spanish.

Gaelic, though, is “hugely important” to him. His Makar poems will be in Gaelic and English, to be as accessible as possible, and he acknowledged it was “great” for a Gaelic poet to have this role.

When first sounded out about it, Dr Mackay’s initial reaction was “bemusement, to some extent” as it was unexpected, but then “happiness and terror” and the realisation that this was “quite a big thing”.

He said: “Even if I didn’t want to do it then I probably would have had to say yes because otherwise the Gaels would have crucified me for not saying yes.”

Having grown up in Shader, Barvas, “when it was still a predominantly Gaelic-speaking area”, Dr Mackay said: “As a writer, the basic thing that I do is explore how the world is different in the Gaelic language poetic tradition than in the English and other ones, and have fun going between different ones, so being able to use different lenses to look at the world.”

Dr Mackay cited the influence of his father, Gaelic language activist John Angus Mackay, former head of Gaelic development body Bòrd na Gàidhlig and various other bodies, on the colour of that lens.

“Through all my life I’ve been aware of Gaelic not just as a medium but as a cause, as something that did need to be worked for and helped and supported. Without an awful lot of effort, it will not survive as a meaningful language, I think, and this matters to me.”

What does need to be done, if Gaelic is to survive? “We need as many spaces as possible, where Gaelic is a default language of communication, where people feel natural and comfortable in just speaking Gaelic there, without it being treated as a museum piece or as a zoo exhibit.” That means jobs, too, and support for communities.

And, of course, a Gaelic Makar helps to hold that space. “I hope it creates a space where Gaelic is in the room, simply. It means that Gaelic is part of those conversations, without it being shoehorned in, so anywhere that I am doing events, I’ll speak in Gaelic and say, ‘well I do this because this is part of what I do’ and that’s okay. It’s non-intimidating.”

Dr Mackay credited his teachers at Airidhantium, Lionel and the Nicolson, for developing his love of literature. He also spoke about how “absolutely culturally rich” it was, to grow up in Lewis.

“The history of writers, of musicians, of singers, is something that we kind of take for granted and we probably shouldn’t. There’s just this sense of ‘it’s okay to be creating things’ and it’s partly okay to be creating things because none of us are going to make any money out of it anyway.

“It’s just part of the fabric of what you do. You are just creating things because it’s always been in us and it’s one of the ways of getting us through the Lewis winter. You have to do something beside the fireside that’s going to be fun and to get you through those wild, gale-filled months.”

And how has Lewis informed the content of his writing? There is a tendency to write lyric poems, with their relationship to song, and an interest in reworking lines from old poetry into new forms. This material has included works by his great-grand-uncle, who was a village poet. There is also a fascination with peat and its “many millennia of history compacted into space”, much like Irish writer Seumas Heaney was “obsessed with bogs”.

Dr Mackay admitted: “I write far too much about moorland, I write far too much about birds, I write far too much about seas. So it’s trying to not just do that.”

He acknowledged that poetry “can be quite pretentious” at times, but insisted it “still has a place for many people when they’ve run out of words and don’t know quite how to express what it is that they want to, whether it is trying to write something on a Valentine’s card or at a funeral or a birth or a marriage. There’s usually those moments where it seems important to have language do something more than the usual and everybody has that in their life.”