Kevin MacNeil on Poetry and Identity
Adrian Grima
Kevin
MacNeil (in Gaelic
Caoimhin MacNèill) was born on the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis
(Scotland) and is a widely published writer of poetry, prose and drama (English
and Gaelic). He was educated at the Nicolson Institute, University of Edinburgh
and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. He is the first person from this country to win the
prestigious Tivoli Europa Giovani International Poetry Prize with his book
Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides (Canongate, 1998) and is currently living
on the Isle of Skye, where he is employed as the inaugural Iain Crichton Smith
Writing Fellow (writer in residence for the Highlands area of Scotland).
Adrian Grima invited Kevin MacNeil (left) to Malta when they met in Rome in June 2000. He is being brought to Malta by Inizjamed in collaboration with the British Council.
Kevin: You write both in Scots Gaelic and in English. Who’s English is it? The British, the North Americans', the Scots', everyone’s?
The linguistic issue is an important and a complicated one. My initial instinct is to say that the language I write is mine: after all, these are my chosen words placed in my chosen order. However, once a poem is published it becomes (I firmly believe this) public property, for people to interpret in any manner they see fit. It does not matter that these words and their meanings were originally very personal - painful, even. I believe in the right of every individual to interpret any text in any way they wish. I sometimes write phonetically in my own (minority) accent, sometimes using very local Lewis slang words that do not appear in any dictionary. But even these words, when glossarised, belong to everyone. I write, therefore, initially as an individual, secondly as an islander, thirdly as a Gàidheal, fourthly as a Scotsman and finally - perhaps most importantly - as a citizen of the world. The fact that my writing has given me the opportunity to share my poems with people from a number of different countries proves that my poetry (whether in Gaelic or in English) is not just mine: it belongs to everybody. This is one of the magical aspects of writing that I cherish.
What are the words you would instinctively associate with “islands”?
Sea, independence, nature, resilience, introspection, tradition…and duality.
In Malta you will be taking part in a project called “Islands”. You travelled widely and you’ve seen all sorts of “islands”. But what does it mean to live on a (small) island? Do you feel different as an islander?
Certainly, an island uprbringing gives one a sense of being different. The Outer Hebrides are often described as being on the "fringes" or on the "periphery" of Europe. The islands are seen as being wild, far-flung, sometimes even romantic places. But I find the (externally imposed) idea of being on the edge of things somewhat patronising. To offer a quotation from my latest book: "Where you are is never the periphery".
What are the Hebrides to you? Do you see yourself living there for the rest of your life?
The Outer Hebrides mean a great deal to me. Wherever I go, wherever I live, the Hebrides will always be my true home. But no, I do not see myself living here forever. As with many small islands, job prospects are few. The economy of these islands is very brittle indeed. In any case, I love travelling and would like to settle in another country for a couple of years or so. I think it does a person good to travel, to meet new people, experience new cultures. It widens and deepens the mind. I am very grateful indeed that poetry has granted me the opportunity to travel and therefore to learn more about the world by sharing time with people from diverse backgrounds.
In your introduction to Wish I Was Here, you talk of yourself, amongst other things, as a “Gàidhlig-speaker (and therefore a member of an eroded minority)”, as a “Gàidheal exiled in an alien city, as a Gàidheal whose education was biased towards non-Gàidhlig cultures,” as a “person who felt the need to externalise the contingencies and contradictions of living in a place in which I did and did not feel a sense of belonging, as a person with the need to sew up all these deepening wounds with a pen.”
Gaels belong to an invisible minority, a minority group whose persecution over the last few centuries has resulted in a sorely diminished contemporary culture. The Gàidhlig (Gaelic) language, once spoken in almost every part of Scotland, is now spoken by around 60,000 people. And when a language dies, so does a worldview. It is a sorry situation. When I think of what we have lost…it is almost mind-breaking.
Is the “cultural clash of the traditional and the contemporary” inevitable? Is it important, productive, creative?
Yes, I think it is inevitable - and crucial. I am intrigued by the possibilities of combining traditional aspects of culture with modern art forms - for example, I have a band Tomorrowscope who accompany my readings with a very modern trip-hop style of music. I hope this serves a dual purpose: it makes poetry more accessible to music fans and it attracts poetry fans to a contemporary style of music.
Later on you conclude, “There is no Scotland, I began more fully to comprehend. There are Scotlands.”
Yes - partly because of my zen understanding, I am a very open-minded person. I love the zen notion of many reflections coming from the one moon. Scotland might be a relatively small country, but it is an extremely diverse country. I remember meeting a charming old African-American man at JFK airport, New York, last year. We chatted for a while before he floored me with this statement: "But there are no black people in Scotland." Luckily, I had a few books with me, such as Wish I Was Here, to prove to him otherwise. I was able to widen his views about as country he had never visited, a country that is often misrepresented in other peoples' minds. Whether this misrepresentation is the fault of the media, or a general human compunction to simplify by stereotyping, or whether it is the fault of the Scots because of the way they sell themselves, I do no know.
But I do know that living in the past - a world of Brigadoon and Braveheart - is dangerous.
The inevitable question: do you think that “cultural globalization” is a myth? Where do you see yourself in relation to it?
I don't think that 'cultural globalization' is a myth as much as a danger. The worry that one day people in cities all over the world will be eating the same burger, reading the same lifestyle book, wearing the same brand of clothing and speaking the same slanguage is terrifying. Global culture comprises a vast multi-coloured spectrum: the thought that it should be eclipsed by a single shadowy power is heartbreaking. We should celebrate unity-in-diversity, not unity-in-conformity.
I see myself as respecting - and learning from - other cultures, while simultaneously attempting to do my best to preserve and nurture my own culture. If a single culture is represented by a hand, then cultures should hold hands with one another, instead of arm wrestling.
From Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides (translated from the original in Gaelic): “My neighbour. He’s a tory. There’s a sticker on his car: Free Tibet Now. He doesn’t like the Gaelic programmes. Money for a dead language. They all speak English anyhow. The great wheel turns in his breast as a spade in the dirt. Something grows there, hard, like the lines on a peasant’s face, certain, like a red bomb ticking in a Tibetan monastery in the middle of his sleep, an inscrutable gravity crumbling slowly between them.” Are the engaged cultural activist and the poet supposed to meet (in the same person)?
This is a question that has intrigued me for a long time. I'm still wrestling with it. Should a poet write about political issues in order to attempt to overturn the injustices of the world? Or should a poet write only about those subjects which arrive, irresistibly, with lightning-force in his or her mind? Is there a danger of indulging in mere rhetoric when confronting political issues? Is a poet neglecting his or her duty by writing only about their personal lives and feelings?
I am still struggling with this question. A great many political poems leave me cold. I find a disproportionately high quantity of political poetry disappointing, rhetorical, unconvincing. And yet…and yet…sometimes a poet like Pablo Neruda emerges, whose love poetry and whose political poetry sets the world on fire, sets the world turning at a new, crazy-adventurous angle.
There are people in Scotland - including Gaelic-speakers and non-Gaelic-speakers - who insist that writing in Gaelic is in itself a political act.
I think, now, on reflection, that the reason I have written very few overtly political poems is that I discern a parallel here between the duty of the poet and the duty of the Buddhist. There is a strand of Buddhists who call themselves engaged Buddhists - this means that they go out into the world caring for the needy, feeding the hungry, staging political demonstrations - basically practising a very pro-active form of Buddhism. This, I think, can be both worthwhile and dangerous. Buddha himself taught that the most important thing is meditation - meditation is an active way of doing good to all sentient beings. I believe this profoundly, and indeed have seen it prove itself true. Meditation is a constant grounding, whereas political ideology comes and goes in waves - some waves are relaxing and some are life-threatening. One of the Dalai Lama's brothers recently said: 'The Chinese only understand the language of violence, so why not give it a shot?' This is what I mean when I say that politics can be dangerous. I am a pacifist and I am someone who understands the power of language, the power of words….the power of poetry. What I mean is that poets, when writing, ought to be: honest but mindful, passionate but disciplined, absorbed but compassionate . Only then can the poet stand back from his or her work and look on it with an unegotistical satisfaction, with the feeling of a task completed with worthwhile attainment and lasting humility.
“Scotland,” you write, “is multiform and glittering with exquisite, melodious, hard-edged poetry, poetry that is allowing the country’s three-dimensional map to sparkle in a new and penetrating light. Literary images, human correspondences, cross-cultural bridges are being constructed that shine and dazzle and overarch the old conceptions like a rainbow among the bare hills of clouds.” Is this the Scotland, the artistic movement you feel and want to feel part of?
Yes and no! Yes, I'm proud - very proud indeed - that Scotland has such a rich literary heritage and that this tradition is being carried through into the 21st century. On the other hand, there is a danger, in relatively small countries, of the literary tradition becoming too insular, too claustrophobic. There is the danger that new writers will be so overlty influenced by their predecessors that they engender a kind of incest. The danger is that a country's literature becomes too homogenised, too self-referential. I like to be open to other influences. I try to add to, rather than rely on, my literary tradition. This, I believe, is crucial.
Do you feel the pressure of having to write to justify your position as “writer in residence”? How do you deal with this pressure? Can you see the reactions of the people you know will read your work as you jot your words down?
In my capacity as writer in residence, I have spent a great deal more time encouraging other writers than doing my own writing. This is both satisfying and frustrating. I love watching people's writing skills develop under my tutelage. I feel that I have been very lucky indeed in my own writing career and I love showing people that if they really want to be a writer they CAN do it - I am living proof of that. I was determined to be a writer from a young age. The fact that I now make my living from writing is ample evidence that if I can do it ANYONE can do it! The pressure can be enormous - I'm writer-in-residence of what is probably one of the largest areas of any writer-in-residence in Europe. This means that my workload is sometimes almost overwhelming and I do get frustrated - there simply aren't enough hours in the day! I have a novel (long overdue) to complete and I am desperate to finish it. But this frustration is tempered by the pride I feel at being the first recipient of the Iain Crichton Smith Writing Fellowship, which was named after one of the best Twentieth Century writers Scotland - or any other country - produced. I try not to worry about how people will react to my writings. I write, first of all, with a sense of authenticity and integrity, plus a desire to do my best. If I do my best then I need not worry about what people think of my writing. The important thing is that I do my best. All of the bonuses - prizes, honours and awards - that my writing has brought me have been as unexpected as they were humbling. I live by my writing, and I crave a poetry that bleeds authenticity.
After days of readings, visits, interviews, travelling all over the place, “unshaven” and “exhausted”, do you ask yourself “What for?” Do you feel overexposed?
No - I don't personally feel overexposed, because I am not doing it for me - I am doing it for poetry. And poetry needs all the exposure it can get. I have risked my life for poetry - quite literally - whether climbing mountains or going to parts of Colombia I shouldn't have been going to, and I can say with an honest heart that it has all been worthwhile - more than worthwhile. Because the beauties of poetry will last far longer than I will last, and when I die I will be able to say - hopefully! - that I contributed my own small efforts to the world's most profound artform, an artform that is both delicate and eternal. An artform that is all the more valuable because of how undervalued it is.
Have you ever asked yourself “Why do I write?”
I know that I am not doing it for me - I am doing it for other people. I have two friends in Scotland who are doctors and successful writers. They believe that writing poetry is as beneficial to society as curing illnesses. I find that very inspiring!
Kevin, you write a lot about love. Do people react more positively to these rather than to other poems? Is writing about love a poor substitute to the “real thing” or is it an integral part of it?
I do write about love, partly because it is, originally and ultimately, the true driving force that moves the world, and partly because personal circumstances in my life so dictated that I simply HAD to write about it. Dante wrote of 'The love that moves the sun and the other stars', while Joyce, ever so clever, wrote 'Love loves to love love'. I have felt both rewardingly heightened and brokenly diminished by love and I've always felt that if I wrote about it I might begin to come to terms with my experiences. Love, like poetry, can be beautiful, transfixing, life-changing, overwhelming, destructive, unfaithful, dynamic and unforgettable.
And love, like poetry, ought to be compulsory.
Adrian Grima and Kevin MacNeil
June 2001
This interview was published in
Gżejjer ta' Diversità Kulturali / Islands of Cultural Diveristy (Inizjamed 2001)