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My name is Christine De Luca,

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but that's my married name, [br]and my real name

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is Christine Pearson. I was born in[br]Bressay in Shetland,

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and then most of my life, my childhood,

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was spent in Waas [br]on the west side of Shetland,

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a group of islands at the[br]very north end of Scotland.

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Quite isolated from the mainland, really.

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Waas is called Walls.

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But it really means[br]'inlets of the sea' and it's one of these

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things that the army making the maps [br]got confused with,

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and they put down the word 'Walls'.

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So when you say "I come[br]from Walls," you feel as if it's

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sticking in your mouth, [br]because you come from Waas.

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Anyway, that had a fundamental[br]effect on me, being brought up in a

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peerie (tiny) crofting fishing community [br]all my childhood.

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When I came away to Edinburgh,

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where I live now and I've lived[br]for 50 years,

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I found Edinburgh really[br]quite awe-inspiring and quite scary.

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And of course I had to be careful how I[br]spoke, because I had to speak English.

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We learned to speak English at school,[br]of course. We had to be bilingual.

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And not be rude. But I did miss not being[br]able to speak in my own way.

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I think when I realised later on that the[br]chances of me going home was likely

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very slim, I thought... I found release[br]in writing, in Shetland dialect.

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It was a peerie (tiny) bit difficult [br]to write in the dialect,

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because we never learned [br]to read or write it.

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It was kind of mainly spoken. [br]There was a dictionary,

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there was ways of writing it, but we[br]never learned it formally, so we had to

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kind of... just manage ourselves.

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But anyway, I started writing subversively[br]in Shetland, in Shetland dialect. And then

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as I wrote more and was moving [br]among folk interested in poetry

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then they became aware of that [br]and I found they quite liked it

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and that was really quite strange.

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I thought they would[br]find it awful queer.

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So I wrote more and enjoyed doing that. [br]And as time is going on

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and I'm writing more and more, [br]I would say now about half and half

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maybe more than half in Shetland dialect, [br]or Shetlandic,

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and the rest in English.

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And it's been translated [br]into all kinds of languages.

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Which to me seems [br]bizarre and strange.

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I thought I might read this poem.[br]It's mostly in English,

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because it's about the relationship [br]between language and dialect.

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I had been working away with [br]a Nordic poet, an Icelandic poet,

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and his poem was [br]all about a bird, the snipe,

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and the Icelandic word for the Snipe [br]is "hrossagaukur"

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and the Shetland word for it [br]is "hrossgauk".

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And I had been working away [br]with a Norwegian poet,

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and his poem was called [br]"Hegrehøyden"

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which is about the bird [br]called the "heron".

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And the Shetland word for, [br]for the heron is a "hegrie",

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and I thought that was [br]quite interesting.

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Anyways, it starts off in English. [br]It's a kind of a manifesto.

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Spelling it out

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It’s the way a cat fawns, a bird flaunts,[br]a dog recoils and whimpers;

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it’s the way a cricket [br]chooses from his bag of chirpings

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or a whale sends a long distance message.

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It’s the way our fore-fathers moved[br]to the forest floor, and in the tonality

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of their vocal chords said ‘I’ and ‘you’[br]in a thousand different ways;

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picked up the grammar of polemic [br]and persuasion,

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the lexicon of lewd and lovely,

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the tenses that made sense[br]of time past and time to come.

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It’s the borders, armies and classes[br]that cornered the limits of Language:

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Patois or Pidgin; Colloquial or Kailyard;[br]Vernacular or Slang.

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It’s the famous thesaurus that suggests[br]three meanings for dialect –

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other than[br]dialect and language –

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speciality, unintelligibility,[br]and speech defect.

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It’s the funding that flows [br]from decisions;

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it’s the boundaries and commissions

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that decide that pub [br]is kosher in Norwegian,

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but only if pronounced püb;

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dat Heron Heights an Hegrehøyden[br]is baith languages

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but Hegri-heichts is dialect,

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that "Hrossagaukur" an "Snipe"[br]is language

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but "Hrossgauk" is dialect.

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Hit’s da passion we hadd [br]whin we nön ta wirsels,

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whin we bal soond fae [br]wir bosie inta da heevens

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whin we lay a wird o love apön een anidder

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whin we dunna budder

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wi nairrow definition.

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[ooof]

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A little bit of anger comes out there [br]an the end of that poem, I suppose.

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But that's true, I mean,[br]the politics of language and dialect

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is something I'm interested in,[br]and the status.

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And I think it's important that[br]we don't let bearers think

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that their mother tongue[br]is somehow debased language,

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that we lift them up

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and encourage them into bilingualism [br]where they're comfortable

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and they can when to expect when,

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why, and then a tither why

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and that's something [br]I'm very interested in.

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It's funny that I've just been made[br]Edinburgh's "Makar", or Poet Laureate,

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which I think is really,[br]quite astounding, really,

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given that I'm "kent owre" (known over)[br]as a Shetland writer.

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And that I am quite passionate about it.

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I suppose "I am bidden" (have dwelled)[br]here for fifty year,

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and I do write in English. But[br]I feel it gives me a bit of space

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to write and to help other folk[br]that's come into this city with

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minority cultures, and thought that,[br]maybe feel their language is

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subservient and not, say, good as.

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I hope I can maybe help them[br]feel good about their mother tongue.

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Maybe I should just read [br]another pretty poem,

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this one totally in dialect.

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It's called "Discontinuity"

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And it's just I suppose, [br]a kind of seize the day poem

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it's just about relationships.