Anne Frater
Anne Frater (b. 1967) is a Scottish poet. She was born in Stornoway (Steòrnabhagh), in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles (na h-Eileanan Siar). She was brought up in the village of Upper Bayble (Pabail Uarach) in the district of Point, a small community which has also been home to Derick Thomson and Iain Crichton Smith (Iain Mac a'Ghobhainn).
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Style
Her poetry makes an in-depth analysis of identity and nation as well as love, landscape and language. She mainly writes in free verse.
Early life
Frater gained an honours degree (1st) in Celtic and French from Glasgow University. She then gained a teaching qualification from Jordanhill College of Education (now part of the University of Strathclyde). She was awarded a Ph.D from the Glasgow University in 1995 for her thesis on Scottish Gaelic women's poetry up to 1750.[1] She lectures at Lews Castle College in Stornoway (UHI, University of the Highlands and Islands/Oilthigh na Gàidhealtachd agus nan Eilean), where she teaches on the Gaelic-medium degree courses, and is Programme Leader for the BAH Gaelic Scotland.
Bibliography
Her poems can be found in anthologies of Scottish Gaelic poetry: Whyte 1991a, Kerrigan 1991, Stephen 1993, O'Rourke 1994, Crowe 1997, Black 1999, McMillan and Byrne 2005 and MacNeil 2011. She published in magazines such as Chapman and Verse. Her first anthology, 'Fo'n t-Slige' (Under the Shell) was published in 1995, and her second collection, 'Cridhe Creige' in 2017.
In March 2016 a selection of ten poems, Anns a’ Chànan Chùbhraidh/En la lengua fragante was premiered by her and Miguel Teruel, a translator, in a public reading at the University of Valencia, Spain. The poems were read in Scottish Gaelic by the poet and the Spanish version by Teruel's translation.
References
- Frater, Anne (1997). Academic writing includes ‘The Gaelic Tradition up to 1750’ in Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (eds), A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 1-14.