On Tuesday, April 7, Catawba College’s English and MusicDepartments will host an evening of Irish poetry and music, beginning at 7:00 p.m. in Tom Smith Auditorium in Ketner Hall. The evening, which is free and open to the public, will feature performances by an Irish couple who live in London — poet Anne-Marie Fyfe and poet/musician/critic Cahal Dallat.
Fyfe will read from her latest poetry collection, while Dallat will combine his own performance on the accordion with a talk on Irish music. As part of the evening, Catawba music students, led by Shaun Cammack and including members of the Vernaculars Roots group, will hold an open jam session with Dallat. Musicians are welcome to join in.
Fyfe has published four collections of poetry including Understudies: New and Selected Poems and a fifth collection, House of Small Absences, due from Seren Books in 2015. Winner of the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Prize, she has run Coffee-House Poetry’s readings and workshops at London’s leading live literature venue, the Troubadour, since 1997. She was chair of the UK-wide Poetry Society from 2006-2009.
Dallat has reviewed literature and the arts for the TLS and Guardian among others and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review since its inception in 1998. His first poetry collection, Morning Star, was published in 1998. He won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition in 2006. His latest collection is The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2009).
