Recent reflection

I feel that politics and linguistics have really bullied my spirit for inspiration of late. I feel so strongly about political justice, and yet it doesn’t seem to prompt a creative response in me. I look at Somhairle MacGill-Eain, who wrote fantastic poems of great political conviction and passion, and I feel that my inability to write on the subject is a failing on my part. I would like to take up a ‘bardic’ position, so to speak, in order to give voice to the politically voiceless in this fraud of a democracy. I want to write blistering satires on the perpetrators of political, social and economic injustice. As far as language is concerned, I’m aware that my standard in the minority language that I choose to write creatively in does not satisfy everyone. I feel barbed wire squeezing around my tongue when I attempt an emotional or creative utterance in such a beaten language. I look to the likes of Somhairle for hope, when all I feel is my own failing and lack of inherited tradition in comparison. However, to remain silent is to die. Not only would I have my own death on my hands, but the deaths of ideas, feelings, and the deaths of the languages I choose to write in.