Beautiful Lofty Thing

Neither object lessons nor exhibits in an esoteric cabinet of curiosities, Cahal Dallat’s poems, in Beautiful Lofty Things, spring from quotidian items and artifacts that connect poet and reader with an eclectic mix of people and places, from present-day Rajasthan, Nicosia, Kansas City and North Carolina via London, Montmartre and Morocco, to growing up in the Antrim Glens, and back through the unlikeliest of family heirlooms to Belfast and Ballycastle in the twentieth century's first half.

Each inanimate object, its image facing the associated poem, animates the poet’s world of ideas and invention, thought and art, rumination and reflection, his quest for meaning in past and present, his exploration of events which, and individuals who, shaped a personal identity.