Sandaidh NicDhòmhnaill Jones

Sandy’s animating force is the interplay of language, poetry and music: the joy of language; crafting poetry from it; and infusing it with music to create song.  There is a fascinating spiritual alchemy in these creative processes, which are a source of infinite inspiration to her.

Sandy has written poems and music from a young age.  As she learned other languages, she was drawn to writing poetry in them too, and translating poetry between them. In addition to Gaelic and English, she has composed poetry in, and translated it from, German, French, Welsh, Spanish and Greek. 

As a Poet and a Songwriter, she particularly treasures the traditional formal poetic structures featuring rhyme, rhythm and metre. She loves the sophistication and artistry of complex rhyme and metric schemes, such as traditional Gaelic internal rhyme, and  the virtuosic Welsh ‘cynghanedd’.

As a translator, Sandy relishes the challenge of rendering song lyrics or musical libretti – written in formal metres – from the ‘source language’ to the ‘target language’, with those poetic structures still intact for performance purposes.