These poems have long dwelt on the role that the spaces we inhabit, the places in which we find security, play in our lives: House of Small Absences is an observation window into strange, unsettling spaces—a deserted stage-set, our own personalised ‘museum’, a Piedmont albergo, underground cities, Midtown roof-gardens, convent orchards, houseboats, a foldaway circus, a Romanian sleeper-carriage—the familiar rendered uncanny through the distorting lenses of distance and life’s exigencies, its inevitable lettings-go…

House of Small Absences is Anne-Marie Fyfe's fifth poetry collection. Born in Cushendall, County Antrim, Ireland, Anne-Marie now lives in London where she works as an arts organizer. She has won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Prize, has run Coffee-House Poetry’s readings & classes at London’s leading live literature venue, the Troubadour, since 1997, is Poetry Co-ordinator for the annual John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh City, & is a former chair of the UK’s Poetry Society. 

Cahal Dallat’s ground-breaking debut collection saw him hailed as ‘the unsung genius of Irish poetry’ (Guardian). The Year of Not Dancing, a profoundly autobiographical book, marks his long-awaited poetic return. This collection is dedicated to the author's mother, who died when he was eleven. Her death becomes the focus for a poignant, but unsentimental, exploration of family relationships and legacies across three generations. Poised between past and present, between growing up in a small town in the Glens of Antrim and the worlds of adulthood and parenthood in London, this book explores the bonds of family and belatedly seeks to come to terms with loss through the redemptive power of memory and love. This tender, candid, and beautifully crafted collection confirms Dallat as one of the most exciting voices in Irish poetry.

C.L. Dallat, poet, musician and critic, lives in London where he reviews literature and the arts for the TLS and Guardian among others, and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s weekly Saturday Review since 1998. His first poetry collection, Morning Star, was published in 1998, he won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition in 2006, and his latest collection is The Year of Not Dancing.