All My Braided Colours - Reviews & Comments

Author : Siusaidh NicNeill
Category: Poetry


'Her poems bubble with anger underneath. Passion and commitment are frustrated by the banalities of the everyday world. Her poems dwell on the traditional Gaelic theme of loss, both sudden and violent, and loss by slow erosion. Poems like hers make one aware just how much Celtic poetry needs heroes - and suitable figures have been in short supply in the twentieth century.'
Books in Scotland
'....explores the themes of the passage of time and even, reincarnation, in poems such as ‘Before I knew’, and ‘Touching Custer’, Two of the best poems are about poetry. ‘Mentor, Teacher, Guide’, is a poem which honours the memory of a teacher who inspired a love of poetry; in the ‘The Poet at his Reading’, NicNeill describes a rather awful poetry reading where the audience seem tremendously impressed and the poet reads confidently but the sense of unease (at the pretentiousness of the occasion) is caught in the lines ‘He shifts his foot / from plank to creaking plank’.'
Scottish Literary Journal
'…..contains poems in Gaelic and English, often concerned with dreams and natural signs, and with puzzling out their patterns. The tide tugs at the poet, and she goes with it.'
Scotland on Sunday, July 1996

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All My Braided Colours