Arc o Möns

Arc o Möns is a new chapbook from Hansel and a first publication for the young Shetland writer, Christie Williamson. This is a bi-lingual edition, a selection of poems in Spanish by Federico García Lorca, translated into Shetland dialect. It won the 2010 Callum MacDonald Memorial Award.

Christie, who comes from Yell, lives and works in Glasgow. His poetry has been published in various magazines including the New Shetlander, Lallans and NorthWORDS Now. In 2006 his writing was commended in the William Soutar Open Writing competition and the following year he had a commendation in the Wigtown Poetry Competition.

In 2006, he took part in an original play Lorca's Shadow at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He produced his first translations of Federico García Lorca's poetry into Shetland dialect for this play. The play was a commercial and critical success and whilst the poet was relieved that the demands on his time and creative energies had abated, he could not stay away from Lorca's poetry, could not help asking how it would sound in a Shetland voice.

This pamphlet is the result of this work and, in collaboration with Diana Leslie, Williamson brings Lorca's tales of rural Andalucia to life in the colder climes of the Northern Isles.

Diana Leslie is a prize-winning Orcadian artist with considerable depth to her experience and success, having many exhibitions under her belt both in Orkney and further afield. She draws from her local and personal surroundings, sometimes manipulating or synthesising them. She says 'I am not time conscious; histories are currency, like reality.'

You can buy Arc o Möns from bookshops in Orkney and Shetland or by writing to us, price £6. ISBN 978-0-9558414-4-6