Description
Robbie MacLeòid’s debut pamphlet, Am Measg Luaithrean, Beò (‘Living Among the Ashes’), is about transgression in many forms. From sharing dead tongues in living mouths, to setting institutions ablaze, and summoning superheroes and fae beings; these provocative and bilingual poems break form and language to interrogate Scotland, sensuality, and sin.
Robbie MacLeòid is a queer Glasgow-based writer from the Highlands. He writes in both Scottish Gaelic and in English. His writing has been published in Gutter, New Writing Scotland, and STEALL, as well as elsewhere and internationally. He holds a PhD in love and gender, and still spends way too much time thinking about both of those themes. In 2023 he received a Scottish Book Trust’s New Writer’s Award for Poetry. The manuscript for this, his first poetry pamphlet, won Best Unpublished Manuscript at the Gaelic Literature Awards, and was Highly Commended by the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award committee.
Tha na dàin seo le Robbie MacLeòid aig an aon àm smaoineachail agus drùis-mhiannach, a’ rannsachadh aignidh a tha dà-chànanach agus dà-sheòrsach tro bhith ag ath-chruthachadh miotais agus smodal cultair pop. Dàin a th’ annta far a bheil ‘teanga marbh’ air a slugadh, air a sùigeadh agus air ath-bheòthachadh ann am beul bràmair; ’s e guth ùr gluasadach ann am bàrdachd Ghàidhlig a tha seo. / Robbie’s poems are brooding and erotic, exploring a consciousness that is bilingual and bisexual through reworkings of mythology and smatterings of pop culture. They are poems in which a “dead tongue” is swallowed, sucked, revived in a lover’s mouth; his is an exciting new voice in Gaelic poetry. – Peter Mackay
