An evening with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat discovering the importance of the Glens in the evolution of Hewitt’s poetry & politics

'A Strange Bird': John Hewitt & the Glens of Antrim, with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat

"Yet like Lir’s children, banished to the waters,our hearts still listen for the landward bells."John Hewitt, from An Irishman in Coventry

Cahal Dallat explores the importance of the Glens in the evolution of Hewitt’s poetry & politics, and Anne-Marie Fyfe reads extracts from letters & personal diaries.

John Hewitt (1907-1987) was the most important Northern poet of his time & an inspiration to a world-famous next generation of poets. His unique contribution to the arts in Ireland was to explore, through his writing, a reconciliation between two very different cultures in the North. But how did the former Methodist College schoolboy from a Belfast Unionist background, find himself writing about Irish legends such as The Children of Lir, about Sorley Boy at Dunaneanie, or about Ballycastle's Milltown bard, 'Dusty Rhodes'?

The answer is that what transformed John Hewitt’s outlook & understanding of the North was his decision, with his wife Roberta, to make the Glens of Antrim their 'chosen place', a choice that was initially inspired by a trip to Rathlin in the 1930s.

Hewitt felt Cushendall people regarded him as some 'strange bird' initially, but the couple’s day-to-day relationships with neighbours produced a major change in the Hewitts’ attitudes to their fellow countrymen, & inspired John's political ideas & his most significant poetry.

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Anne-Marie Fyfe has published five collections of poetry & a travel/personal memoir, No Far Shore, Charting Unknown Waters (Seren, 2019). Born in Cushendall, she lives in London where she is former chair of the Poetry Society & has run Coffee-House Poetry since 1997. www.coffeehousepoetry.org ; www.annemariefyfe.com

Cahal Dallat has spent many years researching the Hewitts' lives in Belfast, in the Glens & in their 'exile' years in Coventry. Born in Ballycastle, Cahal is a poet, musician & critic. He lives in London where he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Arts programmes & founder/organiser of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project . His latest poetry collection is Beautiful Lofty Things (Salmon Poetry, 2022) www.cahaldallat.com

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