Hinba - The Lost Isle of St Columba

Hinba: The Lost Isle of St Columba

With Alan Millar

Friday 28 November 2025, 1pm

Glenelly Suite, Derry City and Strabane District Council Offices

Derry Road, Strabane

Join Alan as he recounts his 2024, ACNI-assisted journey to the southern Hebridean island of Colonsay, in search of his Mesolithic ancestors, only to be astounded and delighted by how powerfully fellow Donegal man St. Columba still resonates through this region. How he heard, for the first time, of the lost island of Hinba, with its monastic settlement, linked to Iona. Greatly inspired, Alan started work on his own modern take on St Columba and Hinba with poems exploring the past, present, landscape and shared heritage of the wild western coasts of Scotland and northern coasts of Ireland, with their interconnected themes provoked by the mysterious ‘Hinba the Lost Isle of St Columba’. Hear about his journey in creating the poems, interspersed with recitals written, in Ulster-Scots, about an iconic figure of Gaelic heritage, with English translations. Alan concludes by outlining his own journey back home to Donegal with his reinvigorated vision of St Columba and to Sligo where the great battle of Cúl Dreimhne, still known as The Battle of the Book, remains, for many, at the heart of the story of St. Columba.    

 Alan Millar: Alan Millar is a poet, writer and journalist from the Laggan Valley, East Donegal, who now lives in Ballymoney, Co Antrim. He attended the Royal & Prior Comprehensive School, Raphoe and graduated from TCD. He writes mostly in the Ulster-Scots language and is the only Irish person to have won the Scots Language Society’s Hugh MacDiarmid Tassie (2021). He also won the inaugural Library Hall Library Ulster-Scots short story competition in 2021, and the poetry section in 2023. His first collection of poetry ‘Echas frae tha Big Swilly Swally’ was published, May 2023. He was nominated for Scots Writer of the Year, 2023 in the Scots Language Awards the same year. His second collection, Frae Erris tae Wrath, assisted by ACNI, is due out presently. He commenced a Doctorate at Ulster University in 2024 on the United Irish newspaper, Northern Star. In May 2025 he joined the Board of the Ulster-Scots Agency, as Irish government nominee. In June 2025, he was joint editor of the Flann O’Brien trilingual schools’ creative writing collection ‘Abhainn Burn River’. In August 2025, he was appointed editor of the Scots Language Society’s magazine Lallans.

Admission Free / Light refreshments provided from 12:30pm

To book your place contact T: 028 71 376 579 or email ulsterscots@derrystrabane.com

Entrance Fee