Ciaran Carson
Encyclopedia
Ciaran Gerard Carson (born 9 October 1948) is a Belfast
, Northern Ireland
-born poet
and novelist.
into an Irish-speaking
family. He attended St Marys CBGS Belfast
before proceeding to Queen's University, Belfast (QUB) to read for a degree in English
.
After graduation, he worked for over twenty years as the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
. In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of English at QUB where he established, and is the current Director of, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. He resides in Belfast.
. His prose includes The Star Factory (1997) and Fishing for Amber (1999).
His most recent novel, Shamrock Tea (2001), explores themes present in Jan van Eyck
's painting The Arnolfini Marriage. His translation of Dante
's Inferno was published in November 2002. Breaking News, (2003), won the Forward Poetry Prize
(Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and a Cholmondeley Award
. His translation of Brian Merriman
's The Midnight Court came out in 2006. For All We Know was published in 2008, and his Collected Poems were published in Ireland in 2008, and in North America in 2009.
Carson is also an accomplished musician, and is the author of Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music (1996), a study of Irish traditional music. He writes a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music for The Journal of Music. In 2007 his translation of the early Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge
, The Táin, was published by Penguin Classics.
. (Muldoon also combines both modes). In a trivial sense, what differentiates them is line length. As Carol Rumens has pointed out 'Before the 1987 publication of The Irish for No, Carson was a quiet, solid worker in the groves of Heaney
. But at that point he rebelled into language, set free by a rangy "long line" that has been attributed variously to the influence of C. K. Williams
, Louis MacNeice
and traditional music'.
Carson's first book was The New Estate (1976). In the ten years before The Irish for No (1987) he perfected a new style which effects a unique fusion of traditional story telling with postmodernist devices. The first poem in The Irish for No, the tour-de-force 'Dresden' parades his new technique. Free ranging allusion is the key. The poem begins in shabby bucolic:
It takes five pages to get to Dresden, the protagonist having joined the RAF as an escape from rural and then urban poverty. In Carson everything is rooted in the everyday, so the destruction of Dresden evokes memories of a particular Dresden shepherdess he had on the mantelpiece as a child and the destruction is described in terms of 'an avalanche of porcelain, sluicing and cascading'.
Like Muldoon's, Carson's work is intensely allusive. In much of his poetry he has a project of sociological scope: to evoke Belfast in encyclopaedic detail. The second half of The Irish for No was called Belfast Confetti (1990) and this idea expanded to become his next book. The Belfast of the Troubles is mapped with obsessive precision and the language of the Troubles is as powerful a presence as the Troubles
themselves. The title "Belfast Confetti" signals this:
In his next book, First Language, (1993) that won the T. S. Eliot Prize, language has become the subject. There are translations of Ovid
, Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Carson is deeply influenced by Louis MacNeice
and he includes a poem called 'Bagpipe Music'. What it owes to the original is its rhythmic verve. With his love of dense long lines it is not surprising he is drawn to classical poetry and Baudelaire. In fact, the rhythm of 'Bagpipe Music' seems to be that of an Irish jig, on which subject he is an expert (his book about Irish music Last Night's Fun (1996) is regarded as a classic. To be precise, the rhythm is that of a "single jig" or "slide."):
'blah dithery dump a doodle scattery idle fortunoodle.'
Carson then entered a prolific phase in which the concern for language liberated him into a new creativity. Opera Etcetera (1996) had a set of poems on letters of the alphabet and another series on Latin tags such as 'Solvitur Ambulando' and 'Quod Erat Demonstrandum' and another series of translations form the Romanian poet Stefan Augustin Doinas. Translation became a key concern, The Alexandrine Plan (1998) featured sonnets by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé rendered into alexandrines. Carson's penchant for the long line found a perfect focus in the 12-syllable alexandrine line. He also published The Twelfth of Never (1999), sonnets on fanciful themes:
The Ballad of HMS Belfast (1999) collected his Belfast poems.
Carson has been shortlisted three years in a row for the Poetry Now Award
for his collections For All We Know (2009), On the Night Watch (2010), and Until Before After (2011).
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
-born poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and novelist.
Early years
Ciaran Carson was born in BelfastBelfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
into an Irish-speaking
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
family. He attended St Marys CBGS Belfast
St Marys CBGS Belfast
St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School is a Roman Catholic boys' grammar school in Belfast, Northern Ireland-History:...
before proceeding to Queen's University, Belfast (QUB) to read for a degree in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
After graduation, he worked for over twenty years as the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is the lead development agency for the arts in Northern Ireland....
. In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of English at QUB where he established, and is the current Director of, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. He resides in Belfast.
Work
His collections of poetry include The Irish for No (1987), winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award; Belfast Confetti (1990), which won the Irish Times' Irish Literature Prize for Poetry; and First Language: Poems (1993), winner of the T. S. Eliot PrizeT. S. Eliot Prize
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
. His prose includes The Star Factory (1997) and Fishing for Amber (1999).
His most recent novel, Shamrock Tea (2001), explores themes present in Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
's painting The Arnolfini Marriage. His translation of Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's Inferno was published in November 2002. Breaking News, (2003), won the Forward Poetry Prize
Forward Poetry Prize
The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
(Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and a Cholmondeley Award
Cholmondeley Award
The Cholmondeley Award is an annual award for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966...
. His translation of Brian Merriman
Brian Merriman
Brian Merriman or in Irish Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre was an Irish language poet and teacher. His single surviving work of substance, the 1000-line long Cúirt An Mheán Oíche is widely regarded as the greatest comic poem in the history of Irish literature.-Merriman's life:Merriman appears to have...
's The Midnight Court came out in 2006. For All We Know was published in 2008, and his Collected Poems were published in Ireland in 2008, and in North America in 2009.
Carson is also an accomplished musician, and is the author of Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music (1996), a study of Irish traditional music. He writes a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music for The Journal of Music. In 2007 his translation of the early Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge
Táin Bó Cúailnge
is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage...
, The Táin, was published by Penguin Classics.
Critical Perspective
Carson has managed an unusual marriage in his work between the Irish vernacular story-telling tradition and the witty elusive mock-pedantic scholarship of Paul MuldoonPaul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
. (Muldoon also combines both modes). In a trivial sense, what differentiates them is line length. As Carol Rumens has pointed out 'Before the 1987 publication of The Irish for No, Carson was a quiet, solid worker in the groves of Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
. But at that point he rebelled into language, set free by a rangy "long line" that has been attributed variously to the influence of C. K. Williams
C. K. Williams
Charles Kenneth Williams is an American poet. Senior poet Paul Muldoon has described him as “one of the most distinguished poets of his generation.” -Biography:...
, Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
and traditional music'.
Carson's first book was The New Estate (1976). In the ten years before The Irish for No (1987) he perfected a new style which effects a unique fusion of traditional story telling with postmodernist devices. The first poem in The Irish for No, the tour-de-force 'Dresden' parades his new technique. Free ranging allusion is the key. The poem begins in shabby bucolic:
- 'And as you entered in, a bell would tinkle in the empty shop, a musk
- Of soap and turf and sweets would hit you from the gloom.'
It takes five pages to get to Dresden, the protagonist having joined the RAF as an escape from rural and then urban poverty. In Carson everything is rooted in the everyday, so the destruction of Dresden evokes memories of a particular Dresden shepherdess he had on the mantelpiece as a child and the destruction is described in terms of 'an avalanche of porcelain, sluicing and cascading'.
Like Muldoon's, Carson's work is intensely allusive. In much of his poetry he has a project of sociological scope: to evoke Belfast in encyclopaedic detail. The second half of The Irish for No was called Belfast Confetti (1990) and this idea expanded to become his next book. The Belfast of the Troubles is mapped with obsessive precision and the language of the Troubles is as powerful a presence as the Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
themselves. The title "Belfast Confetti" signals this:
- 'Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks,
- Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type...'
In his next book, First Language, (1993) that won the T. S. Eliot Prize, language has become the subject. There are translations of Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Carson is deeply influenced by Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
and he includes a poem called 'Bagpipe Music'. What it owes to the original is its rhythmic verve. With his love of dense long lines it is not surprising he is drawn to classical poetry and Baudelaire. In fact, the rhythm of 'Bagpipe Music' seems to be that of an Irish jig, on which subject he is an expert (his book about Irish music Last Night's Fun (1996) is regarded as a classic. To be precise, the rhythm is that of a "single jig" or "slide."):
'blah dithery dump a doodle scattery idle fortunoodle.'
Carson then entered a prolific phase in which the concern for language liberated him into a new creativity. Opera Etcetera (1996) had a set of poems on letters of the alphabet and another series on Latin tags such as 'Solvitur Ambulando' and 'Quod Erat Demonstrandum' and another series of translations form the Romanian poet Stefan Augustin Doinas. Translation became a key concern, The Alexandrine Plan (1998) featured sonnets by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé rendered into alexandrines. Carson's penchant for the long line found a perfect focus in the 12-syllable alexandrine line. He also published The Twelfth of Never (1999), sonnets on fanciful themes:
- 'This is the land of the green rose and the lion lily, /
- Ruled by Zeno's eternal tortoises and hares, /
- where everything is metaphor and simile'.
The Ballad of HMS Belfast (1999) collected his Belfast poems.
Poetry
- 1976: The New Estate, Blackstaff Press, Wake Forest University Press
- 1987: The Irish for No, Gallery Press, Wake Forest University Press
- 1988: The New Estate and Other Poems, Gallery Press
- 1990: Belfast Confetti, Bloodaxe, Wake Forest University Press
- 1993: First Language: Poems, Gallery Books, Wake Forest University Press
- 1996: Opera Et Cetera, Bloodaxe, Wake Forest University Press
- 1998: The Alexandrine Plan, (adaptations of sonnets by Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud); Gallery :Press, Wake Forest University Press
- 1999: The Ballad of HMS Belfast: A Compendium of Belfast Poems, Picador
- 2001: The Twelfth of Never, Picador, Wake Forest University Press
- 2002: The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (translator), Granta, awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize
- 2003: Breaking News, Gallery Press, Wake Forest University Press, awarded the 2003 Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection
- 2008: For All We Know, Gallery Press, Wake Forest University Press, 2008
- 2008: Collected Poems, Gallery Press, 2008, Wake Forest University Press, 2009
- 2009: On the Night Watch, Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press 2010
- 2010: Until Before After, Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press
Prose
- 19781978 in literatureThe year 1978 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to books with unusual titles is created. The first winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude...
: The Lost Explorer, Ulsterman Publications - 1986: Irish Traditional Music, Appletree Press
- 1995: Belfast Frescoes, (with John KindnessJohn KindnessJohn Kindness is an Irish multi-media artist whose work often contrasts material, image and reference in an unusual and humorous way. He attended the Belfast College of Art and now lives and works in Dublin....
) Ulster Museum - 19951995 in literatureThe year 1995 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter....
: Letters from the Alphabet, Gallery Press - 1996: Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music, a book about traditional music; Cape
- 19971997 in literatureThe year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Clancy signs a book deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. , giving him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books . A second agreement gives him another US$25 million for a...
: The Star Factory, a memoir of Belfast; Granta - 19991999 in literatureThe year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...
: Fishing for Amber, Granta - 20012001 in literatureThe year 2001 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic book, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is released to movie theaters...
: Shamrock Tea, a novel which was longlisted for the Booker Prize; Granta - 2009: The Pen Friend, a web of memory, published by Blackstaff Press
Translations
- 2002: The Inferno of Dante AlighieriDante AlighieriDurante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
(translator), Granta, awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation PrizeOxford-Weidenfeld Translation PrizeOxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is an annual literary prize for any book-length translation into English from any other living European language... - 2005: The Midnight Court, (translation of Brian MerrimanBrian MerrimanBrian Merriman or in Irish Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre was an Irish language poet and teacher. His single surviving work of substance, the 1000-line long Cúirt An Mheán Oíche is widely regarded as the greatest comic poem in the history of Irish literature.-Merriman's life:Merriman appears to have...
's Cúirt an Mhéan Oíche, Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 2006 - 20072007 in literatureThe year 2007 in literature involves some significant new books.-Events:*November 19 - First Kindle e-book reader released.*December 11 - Terry Pratchett informs fans on-line that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease.-Literature:...
: The TáinThe TainThe Tain is an EP by The Decemberists released in 2004 by Acuarela Discos and in 2005 by Kill Rock Stars. The single 18-plus minute track is the band's take on the Irish mythological epic Táin Bó Cúailnge which is often simply called The Táin...
, Penguin Classics
Prizes and Awards
- 1978 Eric Gregory AwardEric Gregory AwardThe Eric Gregory Award is given by the Society of Authors to British poets under 30 on submission. The awards are up to a sum value of £24000 annually....
- 1987 Alice Hunt Bartlett Award The Irish for No
- 1990 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry Belfast Confetti
- 1993 T. S. Eliot PrizeT. S. Eliot PrizeThe T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
First Language: Poems - 1997 Yorkshire Post Book Award (Book of the Year) The Star Factory
- 2003 Cholmondeley AwardCholmondeley AwardThe Cholmondeley Award is an annual award for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966...
- 2003 Forward Poetry PrizeForward Poetry PrizeThe Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
(Best Poetry Collection of the Year) Breaking News
Carson has been shortlisted three years in a row for the Poetry Now Award
Poetry Now Award
The Poetry Now Award is an annual literary prize presented for the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet. The €5,000 award is presented during the annual Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Poetry Now international poetry festival. The festival began in 1996 and the first Poetry Now Award was bestowed...
for his collections For All We Know (2009), On the Night Watch (2010), and Until Before After (2011).
External links
- Seamus Heaney Centre
- Wake Forest University Press North American publisher of Carson
- http://www.journalofmusic.com The Journal of Music, for which Ciaran Carson writes a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music.