To celebrate his inaugural year as Makar, Peter Mackay brought together poets working in Scotland who showcase the range of languages being spoken and written in across the country. Among the languages being represented were English, Scots, Gaelic, Polish, Arabic, Creole, and Macedonian. Mackay paired the poets and asked the pairs to respond to one another’s work with as much inter-lingual play as possible. The commission was funded by the Scottish Poetry Library and our new work was presented at a special event entitled “Our Mother Tongues” on 11.08.2025 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I was paired with poet Colin Bramwell, who writes in Scots and English, and is known for his collection Fower Pessoas, in which he boldly interprets Fernando Pessoa’s poetry. In reading Bramwell’s work in both English and Scots, I was struck by his attentiveness to form and detail which provided a rich foundation for me to draw from. I responded to his work by firstly formally translating his poem “Belly” into Macedonian, which I entitled „Меше”. Second, I wrote a sonnet inspired by his sonnet “Hellespont”, in which I reinterpreted the Macedonian folksong „Ој девојче, девојче“ into sonnet form. Third, I wrote a bilingual poem entitled “The Comprehensive Baby Dictionary”, including some intertextual elements from his poem “Fetch”. In turn, he wrote a number of poems inspired by my work, including a ghazal, a reinterpreted folksong, and a translation of my poem “Two Gibbons Reaching for the Moon” into Scots as “Twa Gibbons Rax fur the Mune”. We presented our new work alongside Roshni Gallagher, paired with Andres N Ordorica, and Anne Pia, paired with Niall O’Gallagher.