Since it first appeared in 1977, Poème de l'Île et du Sel (its French title) has had a number of reprints and is, in Brittany, the most widely read work by a living Breton poet.
This long poem, composed of one hundred and twenty stanzas which are short yet remain long in the reader's memory, written in concise muscular style, with imagery of diamantine simplicyty, is Gérard Le Gouic's masterly evocation of the heart and soul of Brittany, its sea and its many islands, each very differant in the men and women who live there. In Gérard Le Gouic's poem they become one island symbolic yet real.
In "Song of Salt and Island", Stanley J. Collier has, with remarkable talent, recreated in English, the atmosphere and mystery of the original text.
Since it first appeared in 1977, Poème de l'Île et du Sel (its French title) has had a number of reprints and is, in Brittany, the most widely read work by a living Breton poet.