Poetry
Prizes
C.L. Dallat’s poem Love on a Rock won Ireland’s leading poetry competition, the Strokesown International Poetry Competition, in 2006. Other prizes include Cardiff International, National/Poetry Society, Bridport, Amnesty International, London Writers, Kent & Sussex & Cheltenham.
Publications
His poems have been published:
- in literary magazines & journals including TLS, Guardian, Honest Ulsterman, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland, Magma, The Wolf, Verse, Fortnight, Oxford Poetry, New Welsh Review, Metre, Smith’s Knoll, Sunk Island, Southfield, Manifest, GLS, Upstart! & Gairfish;
- in US journals including Cimarron Review, The Best Verse & Pivot;
- in anthologies including The Blackbird’s Nest (Blackstaff, 2006) and Divers: the Poetry Workshop Anthology (Aark Arts, 2008);
- in TRIO 7 with John Kelly and Sean McWilliams (Blackstaff, 1992);
- in MORNING STAR (Lagan Press, 1998, 2nd edn. 2002);
His long-awaited poetry collection, THE YEAR OF NOT DANCING is out now (April, 2009) from Blackstaff Press.
Quotable Quotes
- “The unsung genius of Irish poetry” Guardian*
- “These are brittle, icy elegies … a wonderful collection” Poetry London
- “Redemptive in its vision … a searchingly intelligent exploration of the enterprise of writing poetry of witness” Thumbscrew
- “This mixture of tender love poems & elegies is worth looking out” London Magazine
- “A sparkling collection, elegant, sophisticated and witty” Poetry Ireland Review
- “The real attraction of these poems is in their sense of dislocation, of restlessness, of passing through” Books Ireland
- “Exhilirating and suspenseful images of willing and securing safety by the tips of the fingernails … a work that takes it in turn to be open and welcoming and to render reality at a pleasingly oblique angle” Southfield
- “Absorbing subject and assured technique” Oxford Poetry
- “More good things from another Irish poet, the up-and-coming Cahal Dallat” Times Literary Supplement
- “Happy to play the romantic, in the end he inhabits a world which is exploratory and unsettled” Fortnight
- “Shadow and substance, fantasy and reality, morality and politics merge into a single word …” Irish News
-
Lido Café
First he taught us to step off
the back of a moving CIE bus,
run a few steps to absorb
momentum before turning back
like he’d done on the Crumlin Road
in his theology student days;
then how to sprinkle vinegar
down into the paper cone
— even if it wasn’t a Telegraph —[Read the entire poem.]
from THE YEAR OF NOT DANCING, first published in POETRY LONDON, 2008
-
Morning Star
Only the half-asleep trucks
under sodium-lights in the dockyard
see the MV Matutina
arrive under mercury floods;
the ramp hits the deck and they march,
this cohort of merchant marine,
verdigris buttons and flashes
of this or that long-defunct line,
those with no more than a brown-
paper-parcel, some with kitbags
of laundry and presents and mounted
chronometers given in token
of unfinished decades of service
and each takes his taxi — a Humber,
or Wolseley, Granada or Zephyr
according to when each one last
saw shore-leave, for nothing must seem
out-of-place on this homecoming dawn.[Read the entire poem.]
-
City Love Songs
Polis of nail-scissored green, Taiwan
electric blue guitars with tremolo arm
hocked before Rogation Sunday and
the final catalogue payment, of pledged
nine-irons and bullworkers, tough brown
carry-out bags, walk-ins welcome
at ‘The Head Gardeners’, of white
lemonade and black taxis and
pay no more than 30 a score
on lit subway and tenement walls
where they’ll sort lost ignition-keys
— continental models no bother —[Read the entire poem.]
from DIVERS: THE POETRY WORKSHOP ANTHOLOGY (Aark Arts, 2008). 2nd Prize, Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, 2005
-
Abide With Me
After the global climacteric,
the four-minute warming, the drought
and construction of great silver towers
for the final, essential distillation,
I loaded my mountain-bike panniers
with Accrington honeydew melons
and Forthriverbed tangerines,
pedalled my way across rocky
escarpments and gulches to forty-
one North, fifty-twenty-
two West and clambered aboard.[Read the entire poem.]
From TRIO 7 (Blackstaff Press, 1992)