On the Translation of Voices, Accents, Tongues: Scottish Poets Commemorating Robert Burns Today

Abstract

In 2009, Scotland was celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the country’s world-famous and greatest national bard. Burns’s first collection of verse appeared in 1786 under the title Poems. Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and was known as the ‘Kilmarnock Edition’. It is the title of this first collection that has been borrowed for a recent anthology of poems New Poems. Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, prepared and published in the 2009 anniversary year as a tribute to the bard. This anthology contains works which refer openly to being after Cavafy, Hölderlin, Li Po, Pasolini or Montale, to name just a few foreign influences. The range of poetic and linguistic possibilities points to Scotland’s penchant for diversity. It also highlights a phenomenon that for centuries has been part of Scottish literature – translation.