180 contemporary poetry
an emotional state such as crabbit, ill tempered, or dreich as drab
or dreary. Emphatically, Kay illustrates how this loss is a visceral
sensation, with the defecting words described as having their own
anarchic personalities. Hence, the speaker admits that if she had
found the words ‘wandering’ she would have ‘swallowed them
whole, knocked them back’ (p. 50 ). The imposition of a new accent
is also seen in physical terms, since her ‘vowels start to stretch like
my bones’ (p. 50 ). Kay’s description of a linguistic metamorphosis
indicates how identity can be inhabited in a language. This dual
inhabiting becomes towards the end of the poem a struggle for
the restitution of identity, dramatised as ‘My dour soor Scottish
tongue’ (p. 50 ). The closing vigorous statement ‘I wanted to gie it
laldie’ (p. 50 ), with its emphasis on giving it all, affi rms not only
a Scottish identity but the role of a minor language as a powerful
vehicle of self-expression.
Kay’s sensitivity to minority languages and dialects takes centre
stage in ‘Sign’, from Other Lovers ( 1993 ). ‘Sign’ dramatises the
failure to recognise alternate languages as having any agency or
role. This failure to acknowledge is perceived as a brutalising state-
ment of ‘no language at all’ (p. 20 ). The poem focuses upon the role
of sign language as a space of immediacy where body and abstract
thought conjoin in the presence of ‘Everything grows / in the right
place’, where things are seen in ‘the present tense: a fl ashback is
something held between her thumb and her index fi nger’ (p. 20 ).
Kay places the focus on the spatial relationships created in signing
between ‘mouth, eyes and hands’, which become a cosmic map of
‘space between’ planets (p. 21 ). The intricacy of the patterning of
space through body language, gesture and eyes creates an impor-
tant inter-subjective space. Yet, through the perspective of those
who cannot read these actions they become mere ‘miming’ or ‘pan-
tomime’ (p. 21 ). A dominant drive towards vocal expression is por-
trayed in distressing terms where the subject of the poem has her
hands tied behind her back and is forced to repeat words without
signing ‘until / she has no language at all’ (p. 21 ). Provocatively,
Kay uses the startling perceptions of signing as a language of space
and body where abstracted thought becomes tangible to chart
the threat posed to minority languages: ‘The little languages /
squashed, stamped upon, cleared out / to make way / for the big