The interplay of language, poetry and music is the essence of what animates her.  Sandy finds her greatest motivation in the joys of language; in crafting poetry from language; and in the fusion of poetry and music into song.  There is a fascinating spiritual alchemy in these wonderful creative processes, which are a source of infinite inspiration to her.  

Sandy started writing poems and tunes from a young age.  As her interest in languages grew, she was drawn to writing poetry in other languages, and translating poetry between them.  As a songwriter, she particularly treasures the traditional formal poetic structures featuring rhyme, rhythm and metre. She admires and seeks to emulate the sophistication, complexity and magic of traditional Gaelic internal rhyme schemes (which have few parallels in other literatures, save in 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.