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Hame an Awa<br />
Scots Wurds in<br />
Irish Toonlands<br />
With Alan Millar<br />
Thursday 28 November 2024,1pm<br />
Tower Museum, Derry Lecture Event<br />
Born and reared in the Laggan of East Donegal, Millar explores the interconnections<br />
of locality and language running through his own work, using as his touchstone the<br />
glossary and subscribers list of Newton-Cunningham poet George Dugall’s ‘The<br />
Northern Cottage’, published exactly 200 years ago this year. Through the words of<br />
the glossary and the townlands named on the subscribers list, we are transported<br />
back to a very familiar, yet strikingly different world. The glossary, filled with Ulster-<br />
Scots dialect still spoken today, is layered through with many words now lost to the<br />
Laggan, but still alive in other places, creating a sense of shared Scots language,<br />
running past into present, between Fintown and the Shetlands. The subscribers list<br />
teems with Irish townland names, giving the address of every person who bought<br />
Dugall’s book. The subscribers may be long dead, but the townlands remain as<br />
intimately recognisable today as the day the book was printed. Join Alan on his<br />
anniversary journey through these idiosyncrasies, tracing their contemporary<br />
resonance through his own work and learn how his latest poetry project led him in the<br />
footsteps of St. Columba to the Hebrides and to Sligo.<br />
Alan Millar<br />
Alan Millar comes from the Laggan area of east Donegal and is now based in<br />
Ballymoney, Co Antrim. He is a journalist, writer and poet in Ulster-Scots and English.<br />
In 2021 he was winner of the Hugh MacDiarmid Tassie for Scots poetry and the<br />
inaugural Linenhall Library Ulster-Scots short story competition. In 2023 Alan was<br />
winner of the Linenhall Library Ulster-Scots poetry competition and had a top-placed<br />
Ulster-Scots poem in the inaugural Thomas Carnduff Shipyard Poetry Competition.<br />
The author writes an Ulster-Scots column for the Ballymoney Chronicle called ‘Leid<br />
Loanen’, or Language Lane. His first collection of poetry ‘Echas frae tha Big Swilly<br />
Swally’ was published in May 2023. He was nominated for Scots Writer of the Year,<br />
in the 2023 Scots Language Awards and is currently working on his ACNI-supported<br />
second poetry collection, ‘Frae Erris tae Wrath’.<br />
Booking essential: Please book your place by contacting the<br />
Tower Museum (028) 7137 2411 or email tower@derrystrabane.com<br />
Admission Free. Light refreshments provided from 12:30pm<br />
The Random Writer<br />
Story Maker Workshop<br />
Ulster-Scots<br />
Story Creation Workshops<br />
With Robert Campbell and<br />
Lisnagelvin Primary School<br />
The Random Writer Story Maker Workshop is an innovative process that helps participants<br />
challenge and unlock their imagination, cultivate and develop their ideas, hone and structure<br />
their work and ultimately present it in a personally authentic manner, whether in a<br />
story, a poem, a script, a comic, a piece of dialogue, or even a few lines of writing accompanied<br />
by a piece of art.<br />
Robert Campbell has been working with Lisnagelvin primary school in the lead-up to<br />
Ulster-Scots Language Week using the Ulster Scots Agency’s ‘30 Wee Words’ as a spring<br />
board to stimulate the children’s imaginations, and to help them realise that they know<br />
more Ulster Scots than they think. The children’s completed work will be showcased at the<br />
school on Monday 25 November 2024 as part of Ulster-Scots Language Week.
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