Ben Dorain: A Conversation with a Mountain draws on the work of an eighteenth-century Gaelic poem by Duncan Ba n MacIntyre, rendering it into English.Where it does so, this is not to present MacIntyre's poetry per se to an English-language reader, as is customary with a translation or version.

"But what Gary MacKenzie has done, in this wonderful book, is to revivify that poem. He has created a new 'inhabited music' which springs McIntyre's work into the present day. It's not a translation, nor a modernised version, though there is that also. He has opened MacIntyre's mountain poem like a geode, to use a geological term, and he has created an environmentally-aware, science-informed poetic counterpoint in English, which he presents dancing along with MacIntyre's re-expressed eighteenth-century vision. Like the deer they so admire, the two poets' lines leap back and forth across the page, across times, across languages, across species and poetic forms. It is a new work which alerts us to the tradition, which is to say, to the consciousness of the past. It calls this consciousness into the present, so that its wisdom might strengthen us for the environmental challenges to come." Kathleen Jamie, poet and essayist

About the Author
The author, Garry MacKenzie, writes of this book: "My book-length poem draws on the work of an eighteenth-century Gaelic poem by Duncan Ban MacIntyre, rendering it into English. Where it does so, this is not to present MacIntyre's poetry per se to an English-language reader, as is customary with a translation or version. Instead, the sections of Ben Dorain which draw upon MacIntyre's poem incorporate that earlier work into a whole which is completely new. MacIntyre's work is always in conversation with (and frequently contradicted by) lines which do not derive from him and which bring in contemporary ideas about ecology, land use, environmentalism, music, mythology, queer theory, and diverse cultural histories not to be found in the Gaelic poem. MacIntyre's lines are never unfiltered by contemporary thought or commentary. My approach was to create a new, multifaceted, ecological poem, rather than simply to render a Gaelic poem into English so that it is available to a wider readership. For that reason I describe the poem not as a translation or version, but as a creative conversation."

Reviews
;Duncan Ban MacIntrye's eighteenth-century long poem in Gaelic, Moladh Beinn Dobhrain (Praise of Ben Dorain), is also included and follows Garry MacKenzie's long poem in English.



Book Information
ISBN 9780993553288
Author Garry MacKenzie
Format Hardback
Imprint IRISH PAGES
Publisher IRISH PAGES