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On the Pavement Grey: WB Yeats in Utopian Bedford Park – 19 Nov

19th November 2018 @ 06:00 - 20:00 UTC

Lecture by Cahal Dallat with guests Ciarán Hinds and Anne-Marie Fyfe & launch of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project
 
Nobel-prizewinning poet, WB Yeats, though much inspired by Irish legend, landscape and longing, spent two-thirds of his youth in London, the majority of that time in Chiswick’s Bedford Park, the Utopian/aesthetic garden-suburb/artists’-colony whose diverse inhabitants fostered his literary talent and endeavours. Irish poet and literary critic, Cahal Dallat, has lived within a few blocks of the Yeats family’s two Bedford Park homes for all of his adult life and, fascinated by the way Willie, his father, and his artistic siblings, negotiated the metropolis’s social networks, while dreaming of Sleuth Wood or Ben Bulben, has lectured on the importance to Victorian London of Irish artists (poets, painters, playwrights, composers, and politicians, for politics, too, is an art in Ireland) … and on the usefulness of London’s complex intersections and patronage to often-penniless, in a genteel way, exiled geniuses. In Bedford Park’s heady progressive atmosphere (and its winding if artificially villagey avenues) lay the seeds of Yeats’s genius, not to mention contemporary theatre, Modernist poetry and political and cultural changes that would invert the social and imperial order in the 20th century. With contributions and readings from Yeats’s letters and poems by actor Ciarán Hinds and poet Anne-Marie Fyfe.
 
The 2018 Irish Literary Society WB Yeats Lecture at the Embassy of Ireland launches the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project founded to mark Yeats’s role in Bedford Park and Bedford Park’s role in Yeats’s artistic development and life, by placing a permanent artwork at the heart of this progressive, 19c, and beautifully preserved, garden suburb. 


To apply for an ILS members ticket contact the Hon. Secretary: irishlitsoc@gmail.com
Image credit: Camille Pissarro, Fete de Jubilee a Bedford Park, 1897.

Speakers:
Cahal Dallat Cahal Dallat
Cahal Dallat is a poet, musician, critic (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim), regular BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review contributor since 1998, reviewer for TLS and Guardian among others, founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, and 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, and a 2018 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship at University of Texas in Austin (supported by CP Snow Memorial Fund). Latest collection The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff); www.cahaldallat.com


Ciarán Hinds Ciarán Hinds

Ciarán Hinds was born in Belfast: his television roles include Gaius Julius Caesar in the series Rome and Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones while film has included the lead role in John Banville’s The Sea, and playing opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Upton Sinclair’s There Will Be Blood.  As a stage actor his recent appearances include Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive, Hamlet with Bendict Cumberbatch at the Barbican, McPherson’s ‘Bob Dylan musical’ The Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic,  and the role of Hugh O’Donnell in Brian Friel’s Translations at the National.  


Anne-Marie Fyfe 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 a unique Arts-Council-funded 18-month teaching/writing/performing tour, The Voyage Out, exploring coastal regions & lives in Britain, Ireland, US & Canada, leading to a new hybrid 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

Details

Date:
19th November 2018
Time:
06:00 - 20:00 UTC
Event Categories:
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Organisers

The Embassy of Ireland
Irish Literary Society

Venue

The Embassy of Ireland
17 Grosvenor Pl, London
London, SW1X 7HR + Google Map
View Venue Website