A new poetry collection by Ballymoney writer Alan Millar will be launched in Letterkenny Central Library on Thursday 20 August as part of Heritage Week.

The book, titled ‘Hinba – The Lost Isle of Saint Columba’, is written in Ulster-Scots with English translations and builds on his 2023 debut collection ‘Echas Frae the Big Swilly Swally’.

Millar undertook a research trip to the island of Colonsay in the Inner Hebrides, funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The work records his engagement with the legacy of Saint Columba and the sixth-century Columban mission centred on Iona, and introduces readers to the monastic isle of Hinba, whose precise location has long been debated.

The collection blends imaginative reconstructions of the daily lives of early hunter-gatherer and monastic communities. It centres on the Rias Buidhe Cross, an early Christian stone carving which appears on the book’s cover.

One sequence of poems, inspired by Umberto Eco’s novel ‘The Name of the Rose’, is set among monks on Hinba and follows a brother from Raphoe as he carves the stone at the request of Abbot Odhrán.

The volume is published by Colmcille Press and was made possible by a Donegal County Council Artists Bursary.

Copies can be purchased for £12.50 via PayPal to the author or through the Colmcille Press website.

The launch takes place at 6.30pm on Thursday 20 August at Letterkenny Central Library, Oliver Plunkett Road, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.