Books From Scotland Gaelic Book of the Year 2007
’Meg Bateman’s embrace of Gaelic has awakened her poetry to a noble passionate candour rare in today’s over-ironical English.’ – Les Murray
Meg Bateman’s second collection of poetry is utterly engaging, providing a generous landscape for readers to share, and puts contemporary and traditional images of the Scottish Highlands side by side. The section ‘Loneliness’ contains some of Meg’s strongest and most haunting poems. Soirbheas / Fair Wind is Meg Bateman’s most personal and distinctive work.
Meg Bateman was born in Edinburgh in 1959. She studied Celtic at Aberdeen University and completed a PhD in medieval Gaelic religious poetry. She then taught Gaelic at the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Her Gaelic poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies such as Other Tongues (1990) and Twenty of the Best (1990). She has also translated Gaelic poetry into English in An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets (1991) and The Harp’s Cry (1993). Her 1997 collection Aotromachd agus dain eile/Lightness and other poems (Polygon) deals movingly with the fragility of love and human relationships. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Gaelic college, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, on Skye, and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of St Andrews.
View cart
