Guest Poet: C L Dallat
Cahal Dallat, poet, musician, critic (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim), regular BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review contributor since 1998, writes for TLS & Guardian among others, founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, & Charles Causley Trust Centenary musician/poet-in-residence. Former winner of Ireland's leading poetry prize, the Strokestown International, his recent awards include the 2017 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize, & a 2018 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship at University of Texas in Austin. Latest collection The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff); www.cahaldallat.com
Guest Poet: Anne-Marie Fyfe
After five poetry collections including House of Small Absences (Seren, 2015), poet, arts organiser, creative-writing teacher & former Poetry Society chair, Anne-Marie Fyfe, is currently embarked on an Arts-Council-funded 18-month teaching/writing/performing tour, The Voyage Out, exploring coastal regions in Britain, Ireland, US & Canada, leading to a new poetry/prose/travel-writing memoir (due, Seren, Spring 2019). Born in Cushendall, Co. Antrim, Anne-Marie lives in London where she has run Coffee-House Poetry's readings & classes at London's leading live literature venue, the Troubadour, since 1997. www.annemariefyfe.com
Author photo: Anna McCarthy
25th October 2018, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN
So pleased that the October Words & Ears went so well in my absence. Our guest MC for the night, Stephen Payne, said this about the event:
"Being an occasional host of a poetry evening is good way to be reminded of the hard work that regular hosts do to support poetry. At Dawn Gorman's Words & Ears event last night, I didn't have to do anything much, all the booking and planning and local arrangements were taken care of. Still I could glimpse the effort and attention needed for these things to go smoothly; it's definitely a paddling-under-the-water kind of thing.
"Our guests last night are themselves no strangers to these matters: Anne-Marie Fyfe and Cahal Dallat drove back to London afterwards in plenty of time for the next Troubadour event this coming Monday. They made this host's job fun by being such warm and easy-going guests, not to mention excellent readers of their work.
"Lots of good work from the floor too, from Heidi Beck, Josephine Corcoran, Sylvia Novak, Peter O'Grady, John Powell, Lesley Saunders, Ruth Sharman...
"So this note by way of a big thank-you all, and especially to Anne-Marie and Cahal, and to Dawn for putting on such a great series of events."
