Acair san Talamh / Anchor in the Land

Acair san Talamh / Anchor in the Land
Beth Frieden

It’s tempting to ascribe a theme of ‘rootedness’ to this pamphlet, as we sometimes do to Gaelic things, but ascribing a single theme to this rich text would be a disservice. Frieden, originally from New Hampshire, has been profoundly immersed in Gaelic and its literature for many years. Her two languages allow her to draw from deep wells, offer different opportunities for accuracy and concision; and, yes, to communicate with different people.

These are poems of belonging and returning, things that could be considered ‘suitable’ for those writing in Gaelic. But they are also poems of physical attraction, of life and death; poems that flow from night ‘poops’ to profound existential dread, to hope; poems of anxiety; and an ‘I’ that does what we all want: pulls between the confessional and the universal.

I loved the decision not to translate every poem. Speakers of minority languages are acutely aware of power imbalance when speaking or writing in one. Both languages include poems for which the decision not to ‘translate’ seems to increase their value.

There are also times when the poems are faced with translations which deepen their worth, as in ‘Naming of Birds/Fios Fithich’, with both versions including cascading lists of subtle plays on the innocent/childlike lack knowledge of the names (with notable double cultural rhythmic and musical accuracy, bird rhymes having been especially important in the Gaelic tradition), with warm parental competence (in this case the speakers’ own parents’) reassuring us:

‘clarifying each muffled call
naming the ones who to us would be only
little bird, piping bird
red bird, yellow bird
young bird, nestling
ruffled bird, black capped bird’
‘eunan, drilleachan
deargan, buidheag’

We pivot often in this work between the roles of comforted child and caregiver, as in ‘An naoimheamh mìos/Ninth Month’: ‘You the butterfly who rode out / on the lightning, blood moon and / a thirst on you’, to ‘Our little grub always seeking, / mouth working, passionate leech.’ (Here in English we lose out on the wordplay of the Gaelic deala dhealasach), yet the English version also soothes with its assonance: Blood moon, that room and the other room

These bilingual poems feel all the more distilled and enriched for having passed through the other language first. I have no doubt that this selection will be lauded as a belter of a debut for readers of Gaelic poetry, but I would also warn readers who don’t have Gaelic not to miss out.

—Shane Johnston