Tim Tim Cheng will translate Our … in Heaven by Ka Yee Lee from Traditional Chinese to English. The poetry collection is based on the first line of The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven”. The book focuses on a voice which interrogates, doubts, confesses, and complains to an unknown subject; and how such long interrogation will bring the voice back to itself. Ka Yee Lee is a Hong Kong-based poet and writer. Dr Colin Bramwell, an Edinburgh-based poet, translator, and scholar, will mentor Tim Tim Cheng on the craft of translation.

Mattea Gernentz is an art curator, PhD researcher, and writer based in Edinburgh. She has been selected as a Clydebuilt 16 Poet, Next Generation Young Makar, and Writer-in-Residence at Château de Sacy, Casa Regis, and Château de la Haute Borde. She has also been featured in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Dandelion Festival, and StAnza Festival. Mattea’s writing can be found in Gutter Magazine, Interpret, Gilded Dirt, Ekstasis Magazine, and beyond.

During the funding period, I will focus on submitting my first poetry pamphlet, ‘Dryad’, to competitions and relevant presses across the UK. This pamphlet explores the potent relationship between the body and landscape, deriving inspiration from an eclectic range of sources: queer Imagist H.D. (whom Ezra Pound dubbed ‘dryad’), the myth of Apollo and Daphne, lost saints, Scotland’s Women’s Timber Corps in the 1940s, and more. I will also create a new series of poems in conversation with the environment of the residency site where I am based, influenced by the work of Brigit Pegeen Kelly. In addition, I will take on the project of planning and editing my debut poetry collection.

Niall O’Gallagher is the author of three collections of poetry published by CLÀR, to be followed by a verse-novella, Litrichean Plàighe (‘Plague Letters’), in 2026. A novel in prose for children, Abigail agus na Seilleanan (‘Abigail and the Bees’), is in preparation. Fuaimean Gràidh / The Sounds of Love: Selected Poems was published by Francis Boutle in 2023. His English and Scots translations of longer Gaelic poems by Christopher Whyte are collected in Ceum air Cheum / Step by Step (Stornoway: Acair, 2019), while an anthology, Bàrdachd a’ Bhaile Mhòir: 15 Glasgow Poems, was published by Blue Diode in 2024.

My plan is to translate sonnets by Florbela Espanca (1894-1930), the author of remarkable, passionate love poems, directly from Portuguese into Gaelic verse. Born into a rural setting in the south east of the country, Florbela Espanca is nonetheless a poet of Lisbon, where she moved to study law and where her poems were published to simultaneous consternation and acclaim.
         I intend to translate ten of Florbela Espanca’s sonnets into Gaelic, respecting the form, rhyme and metre of the Portuguese originals. To paragraph Edwin Morgan’s introduction to his Scots translations of Mayakovsky in Wi the Haill Voice, the challenge is to see whether I can find in Gaelic the resources to match the energy, passion and musicality of Florbela Espanca’s sonnets,
expanding the range of my own Gaelic poetry in the process.
         No poems translated from Portuguese are included in Derick Thomson’s anthology of European poetry in Gaelic making this new territory for Gaelic writing beyond my own work. Having interviewed the poet about his concrete poetry, I know how important engaging with Lusophone poetry was for Edwin Morgan’s own development and so it’s very gratifying to have the Edwin Morgan Trust’s support with this work.