Kate Armstrong: Scottish Poetry

This poem and an earlier version of its translation were published side by side in La comète d'Halcyon,a bilingual anthology which belongs to the series 'Poésie des régions d'Europe', brought out at regular intervals by a Namur-based publishing house called 'Sources'. This volume, edited by poet John Glenday, was published thanks to the financial support of both the Scottish Arts Council and the 'Communauté française de Belgique' (i.e. the local authority responsible for culture in French-speaking Belgium). The idea is to bring to the attention of the francophone reading public poems written in lesser known parts of Europe, or, alternately, unduly ignored poets even in well advertised areas.

A former collection (Sans mouton ni dragon,edited by poet Tony Curtis) had been the first bilingual anthology of bilingual French-English poetry written in Wales. The next anthology in the same series in which the originals are poems written in varieties of English will be devoted to writers who live in England but come from different countries, whether Pakistan, Hungary, the Caribbean, Kenya, Germany, or India. La comète d'Halcyon/Halcyon's Cometfocuses on poetry in Scotland, whether written in Standard English, in Scots or in Gaelic.

Read more... About Kate Armstrong

Picture:© Dr D.M Cockburn 

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