Cahal Dallat: Poet, Musician and Critic
CL Dallat
- b. Ballycastle, in the Antrim Glens, 1953;
- studied Statistics & Operational Research at Queen’s University Belfast;
- has lived in London since 1974;
- is married to poet, Anne-Marie Fyfe — they have two children;
- has worked in television, publishing, public utilities, construction & information technology & taught systems analysts in India;
- plays several instruments including bandoneon, musette-accordion, mando-fiddle, balalaika, piano, clarinet & soprano-sax;
- writes on Irish fiction & drama for a range of literary journals including the Times Literary Supplement & the Guardian;
- has been a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s weekly arts magazine, Saturday Review, since its inception in 1998.
His poetry appears in a range of literary magazines & anthologies, in Trio 7 (with John Kelly & Sean McWilliams, Blackstaff Press, 1992), Morning Star (Lagan Press, 1998) and now in The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2009)
Recent Coverage
Listen to The Year of Not Dancing and other poems on Poetcasting
Interview (& audio) on culturenorthernireland.org
Some thoughts on The Little World of Don Camillo, a book that changed my life
The Year of Not Dancing (title poem) featured as Saturday Poem in The Guardian
The Year of Not Dancing reviewed by Rob A Mackenzie in Magma 45
The Year of Not Dancing reviewed by Andrew Stibbs in the North #44
Diary
Sat 12—Sun 13 Jun, Bridlington Poetry Festival
with Simon Armitage, Carole Bromley, Colette Bryce, Pat Borthwick, James Byrne, C.L. Dallat, Antony Dunn, Paul Durcan, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Martha Kapos, Daljit Nagra, Heather Phillipson, Jacob Polley, Robin Robertson and David Wheatley, at Sewerby Hall & Gardens, Bridlington
Mon 14 Jun—Fri 16 Jul, 7-8.30pm, 15th Irish Writers in London Summer School
Special guest at this year’s summer school is the Booker prize nominated writer Julia O’Faolain who will be discussing her short stories and the influence of her famous father Sean.
Other writers appearing include Catherine O’Flynn who will be discussing her Costa prize winning novel, What Was Lost, poet Cahal Dallat who will be reading from his new collection, The Year of Not Dancing, the playwright Gerry McKee who will be discussing his radio-play, My Sky Blue Trades and John O’Donoghue who will be talking about his recent critically-acclaimed memoir, Sectioned, at Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University, info: t.murray@londonmet.ac.uk or 020 7133 2593
Sat 19 Jun, The Wolf Poetry Magazine Launch at the Poetry Society Studio
Featuring editor James Byrne and contributors including Alfred Corn and Anne-Marie Fyfe
Venue: Poetry Society Studio, upstairs at the Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, St. Covent Garden. London WC2H 9BX
Thu 24 Jun, 7.30pm, Bedford Park Festival Poetry Event
The Poetry of Gardens in the world’s first Garden Suburb, with special guest Polly Devlin …plus usual themed music, refreshments, hosted by local poets Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Thursday 24th June, 7.30 for 8pm, Admission £7.50, Wine & soft drinks on sale from 7.30 pm, St. Michael & All Angels Parish Hall, opp. Turnham Green tube station, Bath Road London W4 1TX, 020 8995 3285
Sun 27 Jun, 12noon, Akhmatova, Mandelstam & Tsvetaeva
Seminar with C.L. Dallat for Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Troubadour Coffee-House, 263-267 Old Brompton Rd, London SW5
Mon 26—Fri 30 Jul, The 23rd John Hewitt International Summer School
with Sharon Olds, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley, Paul Perry, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Dennis O’Driscoll, Eoghan Walls and Chris Agee, plus Blake Morrison, Terry Eagleton, Glenn Patterson, Louis de Bernieres, fiction, drama, poetry workshops, music, dicussions and much more, Marketplace Theatre, Armagh City, Co. Armagh
Some Poetry Prizes and Awards, 2010
Some poetry prize/awards news that might be of interest to poets, poetry publishers, and anyone who happens to know a poet or two!
Prizes totalling £2,150 plus Troubadour readings etc for winners in the 4th Annual Troubadour International Poetry Prize judged by Gwyneth Lewis and Maurice Riordan
AND
The £2,500 London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award 2010 for the best first collection in the past year, sponsored by Cegin Productions and organised by Coffee-House Poetry for the London Festival Fringe 2010 to be judged by Daljit Nagra, Tamar Yoseloff and Adam O’Riordan, deadline for submissions/nominations 18th June…
Love on a Rock
Who could tell them now – out in the world,
its plethorae of arc-lights, halogens, discos —
those lighthouse children with listening eyes,
now the last tin cup, plate and fork
are stowed in the last canvas bag under
a fo’c‘sle and rowed with their owner
to the supply port, gold watch and severance.
But you’d know them then in utility brown-
and-cream rooms, wiser in their generations
than world-children; at jonquil Formica tables,
sucked HB stubs at poise to take down
wireless PO boxes, or describe collections
and hobbies to comics; devouring a quarter’s worth —
in a morning — of Dandys and Beanos and Judys
since the weather last faired; or dwelling
on all missing lightkeeping men …
know them playing ecksy-oseys in winter,
hopscotching the one slab of cement
between storm door and fairweather jetty:
and know by their manners when bible-people
came with flasks in baskets and Old-Testament
crayoning books, or hikers with tripods
to put the rock in their textbooks and maps.
You might see them still, if you’re careful
on city-hall or tower-block stairways, left
foot tiptoed on an absent stiletto from years
navigating anti-clockwise tight spiral stairs:
or find them when everyone’s gone,
rocking against the emulsioned wall
in the dark of a seventh-floor office
and the sound that you hear isn’t them
but the thinness of baby-seals’ weeping
or the contralto with auburn-grey wisps
chanting the bright stormy sea as she folds
the cold grey sheet down and Trinity-
House-issue blankets, tells them never
to fret. Or their lilting along to the small-
gansied man with pipe-grime under
his left index-nail rippling a hornpipe’s
slow triplets on a Breton concertina.
And you’ll know them in truth for children
of the rocks, for they’ll have preset
the Xerox’s counter right up to the thousand,
lid-up and nothing on the glass, eyelids
numb on the margin of sleep as the phasings
of light take them home to the beam-room again.
Winner, Strokestown International Poetry Competition, 2006
Listen to Love on a Rock and other poems on Poetcasting