About Anne-Marie Fyfe

Anne-Marie Fyfe, poet, creative-writing teacher, arts-organiser & former Chair of the Poetry Society, was born in Cushendall in the Glens of Antrim and now lives in West London.

front cover of No Far Shore

No Far Shore: Charting Unknown Waters (Seren Books, 2019) sees Anne-Marie Fyfe, who grew up on the Antrim Coast, explore her poetic obsession with horizon-gazing, on an odyssey from her native Cushendall, by way of sea’s-edge locations such as Suffolk, Orkney, Wexford and Swansea, to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and then north from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia’s remote Breton Cove.

Charting, in a travel/literary memoir that blends poetry, prose, research and recall, the maritime sensibilities of loved writers from Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson to Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bishop, Fyfe finds shore-dwellers dividing into those who exult in setting out to sea, and those who long instead for headland and island isolation, yearnings traceable, perhaps, to loss and absence in childhood, experiences which find echoes in Fyfe’s own growing-up to the sound of North Channel waves.

front cover of House of Small Absences

This is the story of a quest that took the author to known and unfamiliar coastal waters, via lighthouses, small harbours and mythical isles, and back into the shifting tidelines of memory and hidden inlets of her own family narrative.

  • Buy No Far Shore, House of Small Absences (Seren, 2015) & other Anne-Marie Fyfe poetry collections from Seren Books
               

Current events…

Solitude
  • sun 15 oct—sat 16 dec, £280: solitary spaces: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with anne-marie fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
(pic: Flying South, Karen Hollingsworth)

There is a solitude of space Emily Dickinson

Seclusion, silence, isolation: so often creativity’s spur, but how much do we really speak, in our poems, of the intensity of solitude, its potential for deep reflection, for solace, for the prospect of insights into both an interior universe & the busy outer world from which we find can ourselves in retreat, absented from the constant buzz of the everyday & social interaction.

Isolation’s been a key word on & off over the past two/three years, but in this course we’ll be exploring the much wider positive (& sometimes negative) implications of being confined, detached, of waiting for both endings & beginnings.

Your Solitary Spaces thoughts & theories, images, inspirations & tasks will arrive in your inbox weekly, ending with a module on ways to edit your writing. Two weeks later there’s a written appraisal of your submitted excerpt, followed by an end-of-course Zoom reading!

Numbers limited, email coffpoetry@aol.com to apply, & booking link will be forwarded if place available.

The Avian Eye
  • sun 24 sep—sat 25 nov, £280: the avian eye: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
(pic: Trapped, Ria Hills)

The strange charm of the avian eye: ever been transfixed by that steady gaze, wondered why the ancients believed birds symbolised the soul, why legend insisted on transforming humans into flighted things? Perhaps you recall the simple wonder of a bird’s nest accidentally discovered, of watching flapping wings take off, of tracking bird footprints in wet sand?

Take wing on this intensely focused flight into birdworld mystery & myth, image & imagination – from archaeopteryx to Aristophanes to Anne Carson & Alice Oswald – where we’ll explore, from every altitude & angle, how these feathered ‘familiars’ hover over the psyche, roost in the atavistic self, enchant the auditory airscape with their irrepressible music & much more!

Your Avian Eye thoughts & theories, images, inspirations & tasks will arrive in your inbox weekly, ending with a module on ways to edit your writing. Two weeks later there’s a written appraisal of your submitted excerpt, followed by an end-of-course Zoom reading!

Home Truth
  • sun 3 sep—sat 4 nov, £280: home truth: architecture & longing: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
(pic: Fear of Emptiness or My Memories of Poland, Alex Levin)

Home: where the art is – or where art, & poetry, first start? Source of aching nostalgia or focus of fractured domesticity, cherished living space or vanished former abode, primal in memory & dreams, a place that’s longed for or gladly relinquished?

We investigate home’s multiple meanings, the who-why-where? of it, its quirks, its ineluctable grip on the psyche, building a body of work that explores our take on this complex concept through a range of strategies including poetry, lyric essay, prose-poem, personal letter, magical realism, film technique, ventriloquism, duende, diary entry, flash fiction & micro-memoir.

Your ‘home-work’ (thoughts & theories, images, inspirations & tasks) will arrive in your inbox twice weekly, ending with a module on ways to edit/shape/polish your writing over the subsequent fortnight. Two weeks later there’s a written appraisal of your submitted excerpt, followed by an end-of-course Zoom reading!

Taking a Walk
  • sun 23 jul—sat 23 sep, £280: taking a walk: the poetry of footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
(pic: A Bota, Marcel Caram)

The joys of striding out & a chance to step outside yourself, literally & virtually, & let wandering lead you where it will — get you lost or take you home, find you heading-somewhere/going-nowhere, perhaps, on pilgrimages & peregrinations that are directional, orbital, exploratory & immersive, subconscious or psychogeographic.

On foot (in both imagination & actuality, though nothing too demanding) at various hours & several weathers, by familiar walkways, urban alleys & riverbank towpaths, on routes subterranean or sublime – & ever, as poets, witnessing, creating, inventing, simply being present.

Your perambulatory ‘itineraries’ (with exercises, images, inspirations & observations on the history, psychology & philosophy of walking) will pop up in your inbox twice a week (one real, one virtual) for six weeks, ending with a (week seven) module on shaping/structuring/polishing your work. Two weeks later there’ll be a written appraisal of your submitted excerpt, followed by an end-of-course Zoom reading!

  • Recent events & workshops, see below ‘Reviews & Features’

           

Anne-Marie Fyfe has…

Previous Reviews/Features…

Recent Events

  • Wed 14 Jun, 7.30 for 8pm: Bedford Park Festival celebrates Yeats’s Birthday: Only My Dreams with special guest Marina Warner, plus London and local poets hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat for WB Yeats Bedford Park Project
  • Sun 28 May—Sat 29 Jul: Taking a Walk: the Poetry of Footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 5 Mar—Sat 6 May, £280: Nocturne: a 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Feb-Mar, on Antrim Coast, filming readings from, & interviews on, No Far Shore: Charting Unknown Waters for Open University course materials
  • Sat 28 Jan, 11am, Discover Bedford Park with WB Yeats launch of Ciarán-Hinds-narrated smartphone trail at Conrad Shawcross RA’s #EnwroughtLight: launched by Jeremy Vine with readings from Anne-Marie Fyfe and Polly Devlin for WB Yeats Bedford Park Project
  • Sun 15 Jan—Sat 18 Mar: Solitary Spaces: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series on solitude, with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • 2022
  • Mon 5 Dec, 7.30 pm: Troubadour International Poetry Prize Prize Night 2022: judges Victoria Kennefick & Joshua Bennett with 2022 prizewinners
  • Sun 9 Oct—Sat 10 Dec: Taking a Walk: the Poetry of Footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 28 Aug—Sat 10 Dec: Home Truth: Architecture & Longing: 12-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 7 Aug—Sat 15 Oct: Taking a Walk: the Poetry of Footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Mon 13 Jun, 7.30 for 8pm: Bedford Park Festival, poetry evening: The Poetry of Things, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Sun 22 May—Sat 11 Sep: Home Truth: Architecture & Longing: 12-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Mon 23 May, 8pm: Tom Sleigh & Cahal Dallat: reading & in-conversation, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry

    Bedford Park
  • Wed 20 Apr, 7.30 pm: What did WB Yeats ever do for Bedford Park (and vice versa) Lecture by: Cahal Dallat, with Yeats readings by Anne-Marie Fyfe @: St Michael & All Angels, Bedford Park for WB Yeats Bedford Park Project
  • Sun 20 Feb—Sat 2 Apr: The Avian Eye: 6-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Mon 17 Jan, 8pm: Jane Hirshfield: reading & in-conversation with Cahal Dallat, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 16 Jan—Sun 20 Mar: Taking a Walk — the Poetry of Footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry
  • 2021
  • Mon 6 Dec, 8pm: Troubadour International Poetry Prize Prize Night 2021 with judges John McAuliffe & Linda Gregerson (free online event) with 2021 prizewinners, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 10 Oct—Sat 11 Dec: Taking a Walk — the Poetry of Footfall: 9-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry
  • Mon 20 Sep, 8pm: Mark Halliday: reading & in-conversation (free online event, hosted by anne-marie fyfe) @: Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 12 Sep—Sat 20 Nov: Taking a Walk — the Poetry of Footfall: 10-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry
Townley Hall
  • Sun 8 Aug: Boyne Music Festival
    3-5pm: Rhapsody in Blue: themed creative-writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe 
    5.30-6.30pm: No Far Shore: Charting Unknown Waters: poetry reading by Anne-Marie Fyfe with a performance by this year’s BMF Young Artists, soprano Eimear Harper and pianist Luke Lally Maguire.
Andrea Kowch
  • Sun 20 Jun—Sat 24 Jul: The Avian Eye: 6-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe
(pic: No One’s Watching, Andrea Kowch)
Naomi Shihab Nye
  • Mon14 Jun, 8pm: Naomi Shihab Nye: reading & in-conversation with Cahal Dallat, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry
  • Sun 13 Jun—Sat 17 Jul: Nocturne: a 6-wk creative-writing workshop with anne-marie fyfe
  • Sun 18 Apr—Sun 30 May: Solitary Spaces: 6-wk creative-writing workshop series on solitude, with anne-marie fyfe
  • Mon 22 Mar, 8pm: Dana Gioia: reading & in-conversation with Cahal Dallat, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Sun 14 Feb—Sun 28 Mar: Nocturne: a 6-wk creative-writing workshop with anne-marie fyfe

2020

  • Sun 8 Nov—Sun 6 Dec: The Avian Eye: 4-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe
KGB Bar
  • Mon 30 Nov, 8pm: Joshua Bennett: reading & in-conversation with Cahal Dallat, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Mon 23 Nov, 8pm: Troubadour International Poetry Prize Night: 2020 judges Mona Arshi & Mark Doty read with 2020 prizewinners, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe
    Coffee-House Poetry free online events, see #poetrymondays on Zoom!
KGB Bar
  • Mon 5 Oct, 7-9pm EDT (Tue 6 Oct, 12-2am GMT), Monday Night Poetry with Jonathan Lee, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Tom Sleigh @: KGB Bar NYC via Zoom
  • Mon 5 Oct, 12noon EDT (Mon 5 Oct, 5pm GMT), In Conversation: Anne-Marie Fyfe & Dennis Nurkse @: Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers NY via Zoom
  • Sun 4 Oct—Sun 1 Nov, £120: The Avian Eye: 4-wk creative-writing workshop series with Anne-Marie Fyfe

see Sun 8 Nov – Sun 6 Dec above

  • Thu 1 Oct, 8pm, Enfield Poets with guest poet Anne-Marie Fyfe via Zoom
Philip McKay
  • Sun 6 Sep—Sun 4 Oct, £120: Solitary Spaces: 4-wk creative-writing workshop series on solitude, with Anne-Marie Fyfe
(pic: Surreal Solitude, Philip McKay)
  • Sun 23 Aug—Sun 20 Sep: Solitary Spaces: 4-wk creative-writing workshop series on solitude, with Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Sun 12 Jul—Sun 9 Aug: Solitary Spaces: 4-wk creative-writing workshop series on solitude, with Anne-Marie Fyfe
Carnlough Harbour

— After the success (& fun) of the past two years’ Summer Poetry in the Glens of Antrim, your chance to join Coffee-House Poetry tutors Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat in August 2020 for another inspiring, lively, productive (!) residential poetry week, & enjoy the classic comforts of full-board hospitality in the historic Londonderry Arms (built 1847), a traditional family-run hotel, at Carnlough Bay on the dramatic Coast Road in the heart of the Nine Glens.
— An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, WM Thackeray thought Antrim’s coastal route, through the nine deep glens & their high headlands, more sublime than Monaco’s Grand Corniche, & described the Glens themselves as Switzerland in miniature.
— Daily sessions will include new themed creative workshops, editing/polishing masterclasses, assignments, discovering poets/poetries, traditional forms vs freedom, shape & shape-shifting, & — at the cutting edge of contemporary writing — crossing poetry/prose/lyric-essay/creative-nonfiction boundaries.
— With ample time to write, walk, explore & simply enjoy: plus after-dinner pleasures including poetry readings/games/challenges, & music in the Londonderry’s Coach House bar.
— Mid-week our poetry outing takes us to Ballycastle Harbour where we board the fast (25-minute) ferry to Rathlin Island (pop. 150), the Enchanted Island in Longfellow’s Poems of Place anthology, long an inspiration to poets & novelists, with its dramatic scenery, three lighthouses & RSPB seabird sanctuary, a fascinating history including Marconi & the world’s first commercial wireless link, the quiet pleasures of Church Bay, & lunch at the island’s Manor House (see gallery below).
@: Londonderry Arms Hotel Carnlough, County Antrim


Chiswick Eyot
  • Tue 25 Feb 2020, 7.30 pm: A Whole Day’s Dreaming: Yeats, the Thames, and Poetry, lecture by Cahal Dallat with Yeats readings by Anne-Marie Fyfe
    @: Chiswick Pier Trust, The Pier House, Corney Reach Way Chiswick London
  • Mon 10 Feb, 8pm: Poems of Love & Death with US undertaker-poet Thomas Lynch plus twenty-five Troubadours with new takes on desire & demise… #poetrymonday reading hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe, with music by Cahal Dallat
    @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London

    River Mill
  • Sat 8 Feb, 10am—5pm: Memory Cloud: House — The Home Movie, Poetry Workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe
    @: The River Mill, 43 Ballyclander Road, BT30 7DE, Course Fee (with teas, cakes & lunch) £65.00, advance booking only, contact Paul at inforivermill@gmail.com for information on how to pay.

    Belfast - Aerial View
  • Thu 6 Feb, 6.30-8pm: Book Launch, No Far Shore: Charting Unknown Waters by Anne-Marie Fyfe
    @: No Alibis, 83 Botanic Ave Belfast BT7 1JL, free event

    The Blue Room
  • Sun 19 Jan & Sun 2 Feb, 12-4pm: Memory Cloud: House — the Home Movie, poetry workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe

2019

  • Sun 24 Nov & Sun 8 Dec, 12-4pm both days at the troubadour
    memory cloud: house — the home movie, poetry workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe (see Sun 19 Jan & Sun 2 Feb above)
  • Wed 20 Nov, 5pm, Landscapes of the Heart with Jane Clarke, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Blake Morrison
    ‘How do you write about the people and places that shaped you? Do you have to move away to gain perspective? And which do you rely on most — memory or imagination? Two Irish poets discuss their ideas and processes.’
    @: Goldsmiths Writers’ Centre, University of London, New Cross London SE14 6NW
  • Poetry in Aldeburgh 2019
    — Sat 9 Nov, 3-5pm, No Wall: Migrant Poets of the USA with Cahal Dallat @: Cinema Studio, 51 High St
    — Sat 9 Nov, 4-6pm, Memory Cloud—New Ways of Writing Memoir with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: South Beach Lookout, 31 Crag Path
    — Sun 10 Nov, 10-11am, No Far Shore: Charting Unknown Waters, with Anne-Marie Fyfe, music by Cahal Dallat
    ‘Hear the tale of a coastal quest (in talk, excerpts, image & music) which took poet Anne-Marie Fyfe from her native Cushendall by way of Felixstowe, Orkney, Barra, Swansea & Cork to Cape Cod & Cape Breton Island. Looking into myth, memoir & the mesmerised horizon-gazing of maritime writers such as Virginia Woolf & Elizabeth Bishop, & back, emotionally, through shifting tidelines of memory to chart the hidden inlets & unexpected deeps in her own family narrative.’ @: Peter Pears Gallery,152 High St
  • Sun 20 Oct, 12-4pm Memory Cloud: Complexities of Blue, poetry workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe
    @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Sun 20 Oct, 2.30-5pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a WB Yeats Literary Walk with Cahal Dallat (for WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, book via Coffee-House Poetry) from Ravenscourt Park, London
  • Coffee-House Poetry Oct/Nov/Dec…
    — #sundaygallery, 12-4pm, themed creative-writing workshops with Anne-Marie Fyfe
    — #poetrymonday 8-10pm, readings hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe, with music by Cahal Dallat
    @: Troubadour Coffee-House, 263-267 Old Brompton Rd Earls Court London SW5 9JA
  • Fri 13 Sep, 6.15pm, On the Pavements Grey: WB Yeats in Utopian Bedford Park lecture by Cahal Dallat with music, & Yeats readings by poet Anne-Marie Fyfe
    for Chiswick Book Festival @: London Buddhist Vihara, Bedford Park, London
  • Fri 13 Sep, 5pm: Poetry Competition Prize-giving: poet Anne-Marie Fyfe, presents the prizes for the Chiswick Book Festival’s 9th Young People’s Poetry Competition.
    Supported by ChiswickW4.com @: London Buddhist Vihara, Bedford Park, London
  • Mon 26-Sat 31 Aug, 2019 Summer Poetry in the Glens of Antrim: a residential poetry course with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat for Coffee-House Poetry @: Londonderry Arms Hotel Carnlough, County Antrim
  • Mon 22-Sat 27 Jul, John Hewitt International Summer School 2018 a week of readings, talks, lectures, discussions, creative writing, drama, music, with poets including Billy Collins, Kathryn Maris, Mona Arshi, Kerry Hardie, Fiona Benson, Mary Jean Chan, Tamar Yoseloff, Billy Ramsell, Nessa O’Mahony, Siobhan Campbell, Sarah Clancy & Zaffar Kunial, plus novelists, playwrights, musicians, political thinkers and much more, @: Marketplace Theatre, Armagh
  • Mon 24 Jun, 8pm, Endings: end-of-season poem-party celebrating finales, conclusions, and the last of anything & everything… hosted by: Anne-Marie Fyfe with music and prize quiz by Cahal Dallat @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Sun 23 Jun, 12-4pm: Memory Cloud: Retracing Steps themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Sun 23 Jun, 2.30-5pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a WB Yeats Literary Walk with Cahal Dallat from Ravenscourt Park, London for WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project
  • Sun 16 Jun, 2.30-5pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a WB Yeats Literary Walk with Cahal Dallat (fully booked, but see Sun 23 Jun below) from Ravenscourt Park, London
  • Wed 12 Jun, 7.30 for 8pm, Poetry Places with special guest Imtiaz Dharker, Bedford Park Festival Poetry Evening 2019, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe with music by Cahal Dallat @: St. Michael & All Angels Hall, Chiswick, London
  • Mon 10 Jun, 8pm, Born in the USA! celebrating American poets and poetry, with Dan O’Brien, Kathryn Maris, Mark Halliday, University of North Florida Poetry Group, plus singer/guitarist Mark Ari, & 21 Troubadour poets each with a favourite American poem, hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe with music by Cahal Dallat @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Sun 9 Jun, 2.30-5pm, Land of Heart’s Desire: a WB Yeats Literary Walk with Cahal Dallat (fully booked, but see Sun 23 Jun below) from Ravenscourt Park, London
  • Sun 2 Jun, 12-4pm: Memory Cloud: Retracing Steps themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Mon 27 May, 8pm, What We Should Have Said: an entertaining, enlightening, innovative & unpredictable spoken-word shindig with Pat Boran, Martina Evans, Richard Douglas Pennant, Stuart Silver, & Peter Foggitt plus, before the break, twenty-one troubadours with poems on the theme of chance… hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe, sponsored by Cegin Productions @: Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London
  • Tue 7 May, 6.30-8.30pm, On the Pavements Grey: WB Yeats and Being Irish in London, lecture by Cahal Dallat with music, and Yeats readings by poet Anne-Marie Fyfe, and US launch of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project hosted by Ambassador Daniel Mulhall & Mrs. Greta Mulhall @: The Ambassador’s Residence, 2244 ‘S’ Street NW, Washington DC 20008
  • Jan—May 2019, Writer-in-Residence (jointly with Cahal Dallat) @: Lenoir Rhyne University, Hickory NC
  • Thu 28 Feb 2019, 7pm: Visiting Writers Series,
    Poetry Reading: Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, @: Belk Centrum, Lenoir Rhyne University, 625 7th Ave NE, Hickory
  • Feb—Apr… Exploring Writers @: Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, 375 3rd St NE, Hickory NC
    — Thu 21 Feb, 7pm, for Black History Month: Langston Hughes & Gwendolyn Brooks
    — Mon 18 Mar, 7pm: Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell
    — Mon 22 Apr, 7pm, Exploring Writers: James Joyce and Elizabeth Bowen: Dubliners with Anne-Marie Fyfe
  • Thu 25 Apr , 12.15-1.30pm, Lenoir-Rhyne Spring 2019 Poetry Workshop, Group Reading hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat @: Colloquium Room, Rudisill Library, Lenoir Rhyne University, Hickory NC

2018

The Voyage Out: a sea-themed writing project, 2017-2018


Background: Poet Anne-Marie Fyfe’s first home was on the edge of the legendary Sea of Moyle on the Antrim Coast. While always engaged with the contemporary, with love, loss, life, & the journey, her writing — from first publishing A House by the Sea, to her most recent, fifth collection of poems, House of Small Absences — has echoed the rush of tide, the North Channel waves, the sounds of fishing boats, the lives of coastguards & lighthouse men, of islanders, & the isolation & marginality, the shifting boundaries, real & metaphorical, between land & sea, between headland & deep.

A series of writing & teaching residencies at Aldeburgh on England’s East Coast, on Inishmaan in the Aran Islands, Achill Island in County Mayo, Carmel in California & St. Ives in Cornwall, led to her 2017-2018 project, writing a new book which will combine prose/poetry/memoir & travel writing, & which, as part of the travel & residency process, brought a themed creative-writing workshop — Edge of the Depths — & linked evening performance — The Voyage Out — to a range of coastal/shoreline locations in Ireland, England’s South-West, the Scottish Highlands & Islands, South Wales, & East-Coast US & Canada.

Workshop: Edge of the Depths: Creative-Writing Workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe
A chance to discover the creative power of raging seas, of Force-9s & undercurrents, of tidal pull, hidden depths, unknown treasures, & uncertain homecomings; of the sense – literal, metaphorical, emotional – of stepping off terra firma into the unknown, the elemental, the unfathomable. Not just writing poetry, fiction, & memoir about seaside days & safe harbours, but the real oceanic deal, the seven seas that cover two-thirds of our world’s surface. An opportunity to experience the creativity of Anne-Marie Fyfe’s themed workshops where tasks & talk, led exercises & sources of inspiration (from literature, the visual arts & a much wider world) will fire your writing & have you producing real results in terms of both finished works & new drafts (& a head fizzing with new ideas, new directions!) … as well as time for read-back to, & positive feed-back from, energised fellow-writers.

Event: The Voyage Out: Poetry, Prose, Music & Memoir
Anne-Marie Fyfe presents an evening on writers and the sea, from great novelists, travel-writers & poets of the past, to local poets who’ve taken part in Anne-Marie’s Edge of the Depths workshops, to the constant, recurring presence of the sea in her first five collections of poetry, to her new writing project combining poetry & prose memories, of growing up, of life by the sea in Cushendall, and of other coastal locations she’s experienced on her travels. With sea-music by Cahal Dallat (accordion/mandolin/flute)

Supported by: Arts Council England

Other 2018 events

2017

  • Oct—Dec, Mon 8 pm fortnightly, Troubadour Autumn 2017 readings hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe at Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour Earls Court London SW5 9JA
  • Sun 26 Nov, 12-3.30 pm: A Tree Grows: themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour
  • Sun 15 Oct, 12-3.30 pm: River Deep: themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe for Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour
  • Mon 18—Sat 23 Sep, Productivity, Polishing & Perfection: (residential) with Anne-Marie Fyfe, co-tutor Cahal Dallat & guest, Robert Seatter at Arvon Foundation Totleigh Barton, Sheepwash, Beaworthy EX21 5NS
  • Sun 3 Sep, 3pm, Tea at the Priory for Suffolk Poetry Society at Stoke-by-Nayland Priory: Chas. Causley & The Rhythm Kings: a leading 20c poet’s poetic and musical inspirations. with Cahal Dallat & Anne-Marie Fyfe, Stoke-by-Nayland Priory Colchester CO6 4RL
  • Thu 24 Aug, 5.30pm, Cornwall Folk Festival celebrates Charles Causley at Wadebridge Town Hall with Cahal Dallat, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Morwenna Gee, & musicians from Wadebridge School
  • Thu 24 Aug, 2.30pm, A Ceilidh for Charlie Causley at Launceston Castle with Cahal Dallat, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Morwenna Gee, & musicians from Launceston College
  • Sun 20 Aug, 7.30-9pm, Charles Causley 100 Years at Edinburgh International Book Festival with Roger McGough, Jim Causley, Karen Hayes, Jennifer McDerra, Anne-Marie FYfe & Cahal Dallat
  • Mon 24—Sat 29 Jul, John Hewitt International Summer School:, a week of readings, talks, lectures, discussions, creative writing, drama, music, with poets, novelists, playwrights, musicians, political thinkers and much more… at Marketplace Theatre, Armagh BT61 7BW
  • Mon 10—Fri 14 Jul, Dante String Quartet: Tamar Valley Festival
    — Thu 13 Jul, A Musical Celebration of Charles Causley in Launceston Town Hall
    — 6.15-7pm, The Breathing River: Ballads, Bards, & Classical Composers: Cahal Dallat & Anne-Marie Fyfe in a pre-concert talk in the Guildhall
    — 7.30pm, Singing Games: Dante Quartet with Cahal Dallat, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Caradon Strings & Launceston Choral Society in Main Hall
  • Sun 2 Jul, 12—3.30 pm: A Tree Grows: Troubadour Sunday Gallery themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe, Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour Earls Court London SW5 9JA
  • Fri 23—Sun 25 Jun, South Downs Poetry Festival 2017
    — Sat 24 Jun at Linklater Pavilion, South Downs National Park, Railway Ln Lewes BN7 2FG
    — 2—4pm, Stop All the Clocks themed creative-writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe
    — 7.30—9.30 pm, Poetry Reading: Anne-Marie Fyfe, Tolu Agbelusi, Jackie Wills & Grace Nichols
  • Sun 18 Jun, 12—3.30 pm, £28: A Tree Grows: Troubadour Sunday Gallery themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe, Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour Earls Court London SW5 9JA
  • Wed 14 Jun, 8 pm, £8, Bedford Park Festival Here, There & Everywhere: Poetry Evening with special guest, Mavis Cheek. Enjoy the poetry of goings & comings, of longings & leavings, of exile & return… And do bring a favourite poem to read (your own, or by a well-known poet, max. 25 lines) of holidays or home, of here, there & everywhere.. Hosted by local poets Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat , with special guest, novelist and former Chiswick resident, Mavis Cheek.at St. Michael & All Angels Hall, opp. Turnham Grn tube station, Bath Rd Chiswick London W4 1TX
  • Sat 10 Jun, Penzance Stanza Workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe in Wheal Betsy Rm, The Centre, Trinity Methodist Church, Chywoone Hill Newlyn TR18 5AR
  • Thu 1—Sat 4 Jun, Charles Causley Centenary Festival 2017
    — Sat 3 Jun at Launceston Town Hall (Guildhall), Westgate St, Launceston PL15 7AR
    — 5pm, Charles Causley & The Rhythm Kings Causley Trust poet/musician-in-residence, Cahal Dallat, talks about & illustrates his latest project to create new settings of Charles Causley’s poems. Influenced by a range of sources – from street ballads, Gaelic laments & baroque compositions (Causley’s Cornish/West-Country & wider British & Celtic heritages) to jazz, blues, 60s folk songs, & the 30s & 40s dance-band numbers he once played locally – these sounds & styles place Causley at the heart of modern life, of contemporary concerns. Cahal will illustrate his talk with music (on piano, mandolin, accordion, flute) & will be joined by his wife, poet Anne-Marie Fyfe, reading excerpts from Causley’s poems, prose, & letters.
  • Thu 25 May, Poetry Workshop at American International University in London, (for University of North Florida students), Queen’s Rd, Richmond TW10 6JP
  • Sat 1 Apr—Sat 15 Apr 2017, Writer’s Residency: at Heinrich Böll Cottage Achill Island Co. Mayo
  • Sun 21 May, 12—3.30 pm, £28: A Tree Grows: Troubadour Sunday Gallery themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe, Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour Earls Court London SW5 9JA
  • Wed 17 May, Talk at Goldsmiths Writers’ Centre, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross London SE14 6NW
  • May—Jun, Mon 8 pm fortnightly, Troubadour Summer 2017 readings hosted by Anne-Marie Fyfe at Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour Earls Court London SW5 9JA

Mar 2017, US Tour

… readings, talks/performances & workshops by Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee

  • Tue 28 Mar, 6.30-8.30pm, Poetry Reading, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, The Creek Cafe 110 E Old Andrew Johnson Hwy, Jefferson City, TN 37760
  • Mon 27 Mar, 7pm, Tangled Weave: Music & Irish Literature, (see Thu 9 Mar below), Thomas Recital Hall, 1620 Russell Ave, Jefferson City TN 37760
  • Mon 27 Mar & Tue 28 Mar, Talking Poetry with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Carson-Newman University, 1646 Russell Ave, Jefferson City TN 37760
  • Fri 24 Mar, 5pm, Reception, Southern Historical Collection & Southern Folklife Collection, 4th Fl., Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC 27514
  • Fri 5.30pm (performance), Carolina Two-Step: from Ayrshire to Appalachia via Antrim County)
    (Antrim’s rugged Glens, on Ireland’s North Eastern coast facing Scotland’s Ayrshire & Campbelltown, were, for centuries, the landing point for generations of Scots (Lowland & Highland, pre- & post-Reformation) & a meeting-point/melting-pot for diverse cultural traditions, as Border Ballads such as ‘Barbara Allen’, ‘The Unfortunate Rake’ & ‘The Lass of Roch Royal’, blended with modal Gaelic laments & the reels & jigs of Irish pipers & harpists. So when Ulster’s 18c Scots Dissenters upped sticks again & took their chances across the Atlantic, they took their cultural baggage of ballads & fiddle tunes to the North Eastern states & on down into the sparsely-populated Appalachian foothills. Poet & musician Cahal Dallat & poet Anne-Marie Fyfe, both from the Glens of Antrim, tell how Scots & Ulster-Scots music & poetry not only weathered the rigours of that two-step migration but went on to influence the course of twentieth century folk, country & rock music.) Southern Historical Collection & Southern Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC 27514
  • Fri 24 Mar, 10:30 am, Talking Poetry with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Cromer Center, Lenoir Rhyne University, Hickory NC 28601
  • Thu 23 Mar, 7pm, Poetry Reading, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse & Gallery, 29 2nd St NW, Hickory NC 28601
  • Wed 22 Mar, 6.30-8.30pm, Poetry Reading, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, South Main Book Company, 119 S Main St, Salisbury NC 28144
  • Mon 20 Mar, 6.30pm, (Reception, Dinner & Performance), To Sweeten Ireland’s Wrong: Music, Poetry & the Easter Rising, WB Yeats Society, at The Yeats Room, Circa 1875, 48 Whitaker St, Savannah GA 31401
    Mon 20 Mar, 1pm, To Sweeten Ireland’s Wrong: Music, Poetry & the Easter Rising, Georgia Southern University, 1332 Southern Dr, Statesboro GA 30458
  • Sat 18 Mar, 6pm, From Brian Boru to the Foggy Dew: Music, Poetry & the Easter Rising, (poet Anne-Marie Fyfe & historian/literary-critic, Cahal Dallat (with mandolin, traditional flute & accordion) explore the intersections of history with poetry, music & song, over 900 years from 11c ‘Brian Boru’s March’ by way of Robert Emmett & the 19th century, to WB Yeats’ ‘Easter 1916’ & that great post-1916 anthem, ‘The Foggy Dew’ (written by Cahal’s great-uncle Charles O’Neill): with Anne-Marie’s readings/excerpts from Thomas Moore, WB Yeats, Padraig Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, Alice Milligan & Roger Casement) Admission $10, Irish Cultural Museum of New Orleans, 933 Conti St, New Orleans LA 70112 (@ICMNOLA)
  • Thu 9 Mar, 6.30pm, Tangled Weave: Music & Irish Literature (Irish poets Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat trace the shared history of Irish writing & the country’s centuries-old musical tradition, discovering how words & music together re-created the soul of a nation. In an hour-long mix Cahal’s literary/musical history is interwoven with traditional Irish (& a touch of classical) playing on accordion, mandolin & traditional flute—& with Anne-Marie’s choice of readings from Joyce, Yeats & contemporary Irish writers.) Admission Free, Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn University, Auburn AL 36849
  • Thu 9 Mar, 1pm, Creative Writing Workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, Auburn University, Auburn AL 36849
  • Wed 8 Mar, 7pm, Wainwright Masterclass, Anne-Marie Fyfe & Cahal Dallat, University of North Florida Gallery of Art, Founders Hall, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville FL 32224
  • Wed 8 Mar, 2pm, Wainwright Masterclass with Anne-Marie Fyfe, University of North Florida, Jacksonville FL 32224

                                                                                                                                                                                     ...with Seamus Heaney and C.L. Dallat at the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh (photo: Ulster Tatler)

Reviews...

Comments...

“Such a unique tone, hushed and visceral, intimate and unexpected: the haunting clarity of that moment in dreams when you realize you’ve come home, and you know you’ve never been there before…”

— Dennis Nurkse

“Anne-Marie Fyfe’s poetry is taut, eloquent and deeply felt. Her poems are haunted by what the past does to the present, and by the physical relics of that past which is only relayed in snatches.”

— Helen Dunmore

“[Anne-Marie Fyfe’s] obsessive reality-testing has the paradoxical effect of unsettling realism: objects receive such glaring focus that they slither under the poem’s gaze and turn strange.”

— Ian Gregson in Poetry Wales

“Anne-Marie Fyfe’s poems have a lyric clarity, an ontological accuracy and unflinching vigilance that is both spiritual and revelatory.”

— Tom Paulin

“Anne-Marie Fyfe reminds us of the skins we inhabit and shed … This is fine poetry.”

— John Greening in Times Literary Supplement

“Time, witness, flesh and remembrance — these poems play in the deep end of the pools of image and imagination. A rich humanity informs Anne-Marie Fyfe’s new work. The vision is detailed, the voice rings true.”

— Thomas Lynch

“Memory is evoked, not through vague sentiment but through precise and intensely visualised detail […] Anne-Marie Fyfe has remained consistently concerned with honesty and integrity in her poetry, striving to find the precise and exact expression of the human condition, in all its bleakness and transient beauty.”

— Nessa O’Mahony in The Wolf

“Poem after poem has this quiet musicality, along with a persuasive and obstinate trust in what Wordsworth called ‘the essential passions of the heart’.”

— Michael O’Neill in London Magazine

“Fyfe is a collector, an archivist of the symbols of contemporary life with the same drive as a photographer.”

— Jackie Wills in Warwick Review

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