Alana Dagenhart-Calvo

Fulbright-Queen's University Belfast Scholar Award (Irish Literature)

Belfast poet Ciaran Carson asks the question in his poem, "Belfast Confetti," "What is / my name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going?" and in this project, Dagenhart-Calvo asks the same. She also asks; Do Northern Irish Poetics still influence North Carolina poetry and music? How do ancient chants and speech patterns serve as a base in modern lyricism in Appalachia? She wants to know if her own poems, grown from the watershed of Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina really have ties to the hills of Northern Ireland? In this hybrid project blending poetry, place studies, and pedagogy, Dagenhart-Calvo will study and teach at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast. Most of all, she wants to walk the roads and be "in place," to hear tales of The Troubles, feel the wind blow cold off of the Irish Sea and begin to know the place she’s only read about. She wants to see the lights of Belfast at night, hear the singing, and write it all into a book of poems.