Cahal Dallat: Poet, Musician and Critic
CL Dallat
- London-based poet, critic & musician (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim),
- studied Statistics & Operational Research at Queen’s University Belfast;
- 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/Articles
- Listen to The Year of Not Dancing and other poems on Poetcasting
- Interview (& audio) on culturenorthernireland.org
- The Year of Not Dancing (title poem) featured as Saturday Poem in The Guardian
- On Medbh McGuckian’s The Flower Master in The Collection, The North #47
- On Giovanni Guareschi’s The Little World of Don Camillo, a book that changed my life
- On Harry White’s Music and the Irish Literary Imagination and The Cambridge Companion to on Brian Friel, Wasafiri #62
The Year of Not Dancing reviewed by
- Adam Hanna in Irish Studies Review Volume 18, Issue 1, No. 10
- Rob A Mackenzie in Magma 45
- Andrew Stibbs in the North #44
- Shaun Traynor in Irish World
- Anne Stewart in Eyewear
- Katy Evans-Bush in Poetry London, Summer ’10
- Iggy McGovern in Poetry Ireland Review #104
From the Archives
Poetry Couples in Magma 40
Diary
- Sun 19 May: 12 noon—3.30 pm, A Northern Spring: seminar with C.L. Dallat
Venue: Troubadour Coffee-House, Earls Court, London - Mon 20 May: Coffee-House Poetry, Summer 2013, fortnightly programme of readings with music by C.L. Dallat
Venue: Troubadour Coffee-House, Earls Court, London - Mon 10 Jun, 7.30 for 8pm The Fall & Rise of Bedford Park with Cahal Dallat, John Rowe & Nigel Woolner
Venue: St. Michael & All Angels Hall, opp. Turnham Green tube station, Bath Road, Chiswick, London W4 1TX - Wed 12 Jun, 7.30 for 8 pm, Bedford Park Festival, Poetry Evening with guest Ruth Padel
Venue: St. Michael & All Angels Hall, opp. Turnham Green tube station, Bath Road, Chiswick, London W4 1TX - Sun 16 Jun: 12 noon—2.30 pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a W.B. Yeats Walk with C.L. Dallat for Bedford Park Festival in association with Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour
- Sun 30 Jun: 12 noon—2.30 pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a W.B. Yeats Walk with C.L. Dallat for Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour
- Mon 8 Jul Poetry Reading with C.L. Dallat & Anne-Marie Fyfe
Venue: Café Writers, Norwich - Mon 22—Fri 26 Jul, Twenty-sixth Annual John Hewitt International Summer School
Venue: Marketplace Theatre, Armagh - Mon 21 Oct: Coffee-House Poetry, Autumn 2013, fortnightly programme of readings with music by C.L. Dallat
Venue: Troubadour Coffee-House, Earls Court, London
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
