Ben Dorain: A Conversation with a Mountain: 2021

About Garry MacKenzie

The author Garry MacKenzie writes of this book: My book-length poem draws on the work of an eighteenth-century Gaelic poem by Duncan Bàn MacIntyre rendering it into English. Where it does so this is not to present MacIntyres 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 MacIntyres poem incorporate that earlier work into a whole which is completely new. MacIntyres 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. MacIntyres 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.