Care needed with alterations to art

AS A poet (well, apprentice poet) and student of Yeats and MacLean, I appreciate the control the poet wants to keep on his/her poetry. Poets change and omit things for a reason (“Row as Gaelic poet’s cut lines reappear,” News, 16 October).

It’s a work of art. You don’t see galleries peeling back layers of paint to show the previous directions the artist went or the mistakes he/she made. I think that this publication is a very valuable contribution to Sorley studies, but I think the distinction should always be made between his original poetry (art) and his recovered versions and unpublished poems (academic matter).

I have reservations about publishing the art and the academic matter together – it should either be a book of poetry or an academic publication. The book itself as an object is a work of art when it contains creative writings, something which both Yeats and MacLean understood.

AlısonNíDorcaide, via e-mail

WHEN I was trying to get a school of Scottish Studies put onto a permanent basis in Vienna and Budapest universities, the then Labour-dominated Scottish Executive flatly refused to support it.

There was considerable enthusiasm for the project in both places. The pilot project had been running successfully for two years, and finance and qualified personnel were both in place, but refusing the stamp of approval by the Scottish Government was a fatal setback.

I assume that the decision to kill the project was made in Downing Street rather than Edinburgh. Austria is the centre of Celtic culture on the European continent, especially the Salzkammergut region around Hallstatt. The world’s largest Celtic museum is at Hallein.

The link with Scotland would have been a major asset to Scotland’s foreign relations generally, especially in the sense of regaining contacts within the European continent. So nobody need try to convince me of the Labour Party’s commitment to Gaelic, or to Scottish culture generally. Its priorities are different and entirely self-centred.

Dr James Wilkie, via e-mail