On this week’s Poetry Programme presenter Olivia O’Leary talks with poets Cahal Dallat and Nithy Kasa about their new collections.
Cahal Dallat is a poet, musician and critic. He was born in Ballycastle, County Antrim and lives in London. A winner of the 2017 Keats-Shelley Prize, he was 2019 joint Writer-in-Residence (with Anne-Marie Fyfe), Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory NC, 2018 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellow, University of Texas, Austin TX, and 2017 Charles Causley Centenary Writer-in-Residence, Launceston, Cornwall. He is founder/organiser of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project. His new collection, Beautiful Lofty Things, published by Salmon Poetry, pairs photographs of objects with the poems which they inspire.
Nithy Kasa was born in Kimpese, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was raised in its capital, Kinshasa, and in Galway. She now divides her time between Ireland and the Congo. Joining the Dublin Writers’ Forum in 2011, she went on to read for Poetry Ireland, Concern, the National University of Ireland, Galway, the Royal Irish Academy, the Cúirt International Festival of Literature and University College Dublin, among others. She took part in the Ó Bhéal series Make a Connection for the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) 2018. She was also a guest poet for the 2019 Carlow University’s (USA) MFA Residency at Trinity College Dublin. Her poem Gathering was shortlisted for the Red Line Book Festival the same year. She received the Poetry Ireland Commission 2020, with the support of an Arts Council of Ireland Commissions Award, and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award 2021. Her debut collection, Palm Wine Tapper and the Boy at Jericho, is published by Doire Press.
The Poetry Programme is a Rockfinch production for RTÉ.