Uploaded May 2024 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
Shetland resident Donald S Murray talks to Gordon Wells about his career as a teacher and then writer, and about his relationship with the Gaelic language. Alongside a recording of a selection of his poems and a short documentary introduction, this film contributes to a small "exile Gaelic" collection which forms one part of an extension series of the Island Voices project, in which its "capture and curation" model is used in new contexts and for more languages in addition to English and Gaelic.
In Part 3 Donald talks in some detail about the difficulties he encountered in first writing his novel, As the Women Lay Dreaming, and then in talking about it afterwards, often in relation to dealing with varying experiences of trauma at personal as well as community levels. The theme returns in a very different community context in The Salt and the Flame, exploring urban American tensions through Gaelic emigrant eyes. He is thankful for his father's encouragement of his wide reading interests as a young boy in Ness, which are reflected in the book alongside the wider research he conducted as part of the writing process.
The Donald S Murray Collection:
Gael in Shetland documentary in two languages –
Gaelic youtu.be/ilIyP19OFwc
English youtu.be/2-v-6xdGuag
Conversation –
Part 1 youtu.be/ILSilMuUBg4
Part 2 youtu.be/PrvE--gsyj0
Part 3 youtu.be/uQMcE5IY-nU
Omnibus youtu.be/T_CiE1jaexw
Poetry youtu.be/QzdB07Khw20
Further background:
guthan.wordpress.com/2024/05/06/gaelic-in-shetland
About Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean:
guthan.wordpress.com/about
Shetland resident Donald S Murray talks to Gordon Wells about his career as a teacher and then writer, and about his relationship with the Gaelic language. Alongside a recording of a selection of his poems and a short documentary introduction, this film contributes to a small "exile Gaelic" collection which forms one part of an extension series of the Island Voices project, in which its "capture and curation" model is used in new contexts and for more languages in addition to English and Gaelic.
In Part 3 Donald talks in some detail about the difficulties he encountered in first writing his novel, As the Women Lay Dreaming, and then in talking about it afterwards, often in relation to dealing with varying experiences of trauma at personal as well as community levels. The theme returns in a very different community context in The Salt and the Flame, exploring urban American tensions through Gaelic emigrant eyes. He is thankful for his father's encouragement of his wide reading interests as a young boy in Ness, which are reflected in the book alongside the wider research he conducted as part of the writing process.
The Donald S Murray Collection:
Gael in Shetland documentary in two languages –
Gaelic youtu.be/ilIyP19OFwc
English youtu.be/2-v-6xdGuag
Conversation –
Part 1 youtu.be/ILSilMuUBg4
Part 2 youtu.be/PrvE--gsyj0
Part 3 youtu.be/uQMcE5IY-nU
Omnibus youtu.be/T_CiE1jaexw
Poetry youtu.be/QzdB07Khw20
Further background:
guthan.wordpress.com/2024/05/06/gaelic-in-shetland
About Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean:
guthan.wordpress.com/about
