The Light Blue Book: 500 Years of Gaelic love and transgressive verse

This book sets out to reveal a side of Gaelic poetry often left out of the history books. It is a collection of poetry and songs that ranges from the suggestive to the erotic to the downright rude.

Peter MacKay

Dr Peter Mackay was selected as one of the 10 New Generation Thinkers by BBC Radio 3. He has devoted his studies to Scottish and Irish poetry beginning with his MA from Glasgow University and PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. Since his university days he has worked at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. He currently holds a position at University of St Andrews. Mackay has published several books on contemporary Irish and Scottish poetry and his own poetry and short stories have appeared in many collections.

Iain MacPherson

Iain MacPherson first studied French Language and Literature in Canada before specialising in Scottish Gaelic at Sabhal Mór Ostaig. There he dedicated his time to textual analysis of poems and songs. MacPherson is currently a lecturer at the Irish & Celtic Studies at the University of Ulster, where he composed a corpus of Western Canadian Scottish Gaelic song-poems.