Alex Boyd
In this episode of Biblioscapes In Discussion I am joined by Alex Boyd to discuss his work and his recent books, Hallaig and The Broken Land.
The Broken Land (An Tir Briste) is a series of images made on the Isle of Skye and the St Kilda Archipelago in 2012. Taken on a camera damaged in a fall from a mountain ridge, the resulting photographs depict a world out of focus, peaks looming menacingly above the viewer.
'Hallaig' is perhaps the most celebrated work by Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain), the Raasay-born poet who wrote in Scottish Gaelic.
The poem takes its name from the deserted township located on the Isle of Raasay, cleared of its inhabitants in the 1850s by a cruel landowner. MacLean takes the reader around the emptied landscape, using highly evocative language to bring the lives of the now gone families back to life - 'The dead have been seen alive.'
