“a fantastic book of poetry”, Ian McMillan, The Yorkshire Post
“am bà rd òg Gà idhlig as fheà rr a th’ againn an-diugh’, ‘oighre Iain Mhic a’ Ghobhainn’, The Scotsman [Raghnall Mac Ille Dhuibh]
“the best young Gaelic poet writing today, the heir of Iain Crichton Smith”, The Scotsman [Ronald Black]
“Peter Mackay’s is one of the brightest and most provocative minds in the world of Gaelic literature today. His work is by turns beautiful, startling and insightful. More than ever, Gaeldom needs eloquent, characterful and challenging writers of Mackay’s calibre. His work is a great gift to Gaelic and English readers alike.” Kevin MacNeil, novelist and editor of These Islands We Sing and Struileag: Shore to Shore
“Peter Mackay’s work inhabits a “trans-historical” landscape, criss-crossed by journeys between the modern metropolis of his working life and the Lewis of his younger years, recouped in poetic sorties in a language whose names and nouns contain the scorings of different cultures: Norse, Gaelic, Scottish, Anglo-Saxon.” Iain Galbraith and Robyn Marsack in Oxford Poets 2013
“An imaginative and innovative poet in Gaelic and English with the sensibility of a native speaker and an astute reader of poetry. The voice of the work here is lyrical and cogent, achieved through stratagems such as intertextuality; near-translation; bilingual sensibility; classical allusion; lists; and exotic vocabulary. This is an intelligent, measured and powerfully resonant collection, with a maturity far beyond that of a poet publishing his first full collection.” Rody Gorman
“For those who feel up to tackling it …” Times Literary Supplement, 13 August 2010 [on the St Kilda Gaelic in From Another Island]
“Even if – like me – you don’t speak Gaelic, the rhythms of this acutely topical poem can be seen on the printed page, and carry over into the English version. The refugee casts scorn and pity back in our faces, and tells us we live in a world that implicates us in their trouble and can at any time land us in a similar place.”
Ken Macleod, on “A-rithist” [Again], a rap by Peter Mackay chosen as one of the Best Scottish Poems of 2015 for the Scottish Poetry Library
 | Peter MacKayPàdraig MacAoidh (Peter Mackay) writes in Scottish Gaelic and English. His first collection of poems, Gu Leòr / Galore, was published by Acair in 2015; the manuscript for this collection was shortlisted for the Donald Meek prize in 2013. He also has a pamphlet, From Another Island, with Clutag Press, which was published in 2010. He was the runner up in the 2013 Duais Cholmcille; one of his poems was selected as among the Best Scottish Poems 2015. He is completing his second full collection. His work has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Oxford Poets 2013, and has been translated into Czech, French, German, Irish, Slovakian and English. He has also read widely across the UK and Ireland, as well as in Germany, the Czech Republic and the United States; this summer he will read at festivals in Donegal, Montreal, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Peter is a Lecturer in Literature at the University of St Andrews, and has written critically on various aspects of Scottish and Irish poetry (including a monograph, Sorley MacLean [2010]). He has worked as a broadcast journalist for the BBC and is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2015. |