Ciaran Gerard Carson ( Irish: ''Ciarán Gearóid Mac Carráin''; 9 October 1948 – 6 October 2019) was a

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

-born poet and novelist.

Early life and education

Ciaran Carson was born on 9 October 1948 in

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

into an

Irish-speaking Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

family. His father, William, was a postman and his mother, Mary, worked in the linen mills. He spent his early years in the lower Falls Road where he attended Slate Street School and then St Gall's Primary School, both of which subsequently closed. He then attended St Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School before proceeding to

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

(QUB) to read for a degree in English. He died in Belfast on 6 October 2019.

Career

After graduation, he worked for over twenty years as the Traditional Arts Officer of the

Arts Council of Northern Ireland The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (Irish language, Irish: ''Comhairle Ealaíon Thuaisceart Éireann'', Ulster Scots language, Ulster-Scots: ''Airts Cooncil o Norlin Airlan'') is the lead development agency for the arts in Northern Ireland. It ...

. In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of English at QUB where he established and was the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre. He retired in 2016 but remained attached to the organisation on a part-time basis.

Work

His collections of poetry include ''The Irish for No'' (1987), winner of the

Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize was awarded by the Poetry Society of London for a collection of poetry. It is named after Alice Hunt Bartlett who was the American editor of the society's ''Poetry Review'' from 1923 to 1949. The prize was establishe ...

; ''Belfast Confetti'' (1990), which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry; and ''First Language: Poems'' (1993), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. His prose includes ''The Star Factory'' (1997) and ''Fishing for Amber'' (1999). His novel ''Shamrock Tea'' (2001), explores themes present in

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

's painting The Arnolfini Marriage. His translation of

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

'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 The Cholmondeley Awards ( ) are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has bee ...

. His translation of

Brian Merriman Brian Merriman or in Irish Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre (c. 1747 – 27 July 1805) was an 18th-century Irish-language bard, farmer, hedge school teacher, and Irish traditional musician from rural County Clare. Long after his death, Merriman's li ...

'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. He was also an accomplished musician, and the author of ''Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music'' (1996), a study of Irish traditional music. He wrote a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music for

The Journal of Music ''Journal of Music'' (formerly ''Journal of Music in Ireland'', or ''JMI'') is an Irish music magazine founded in 2000. It "has been a critical voice in Traditional and Contemporary musics since 2000". In 2009 it was relaunched as the ''Journal of ...

. In 2007 his translation of the early Irish epic ''

Táin Bó Cúailnge (Modern ; "the driving-off of the cows of Cooley"), commonly known as ''The Táin'' or less commonly as ''The Cattle Raid of Cooley'', is an epic from Irish mythology. It is often called "the Irish ''Iliad''", although like most other earl ...

'', called ''The Táin'', was published by Penguin Classics. Two months before he died he published ''Claude Monet, "The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil", 1880'' in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. Its last lines were: : It’s beautiful weather, the 30th of March, and tomorrow the clocks go forward. : How strange it is to be lying here listening to whatever it is going on. : The days are getting longer now, however many of them I have left. : And the pencil I am writing this with, old as it is, will easily outlast their end.

Critical perspective

Carson managed an unusual marriage in his work between the Irish vernacular story-telling tradition and the witty elusive mock-pedantic scholarship of Paul Muldoon (Muldoon also combines both modes). In a trivial sense, what differentiates them is line length. As Carol Rumens 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 was attributed variously to the influence of C. K. Williams,

Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet, playwright and producer for the BBC. Known for its exploration of introspection, empiricism, and belonging, his poetic work is now ranked among the twentieth ...

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 effected a unique fusion of traditional storytelling 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 was intensely allusive. In much of his poetry, he had a project of sociological scope: to evoke Belfast in encyclopaedic detail. Part Two of ''The Irish for No'' was called 'Belfast Confetti' 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 () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...

themselves. The poem "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 ''First Language'' (1993), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize, language has become the subject. There are translations of

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

, Rimbaud and

Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics, an ...

. Carson was deeply influenced by

and he included 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 was 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 was 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 from the Romanian poet

Ștefan Augustin Doinaș Ștefan Augustin Doinaș (; pen name of Ștefan Popa) (April 26, 1922 – May 25, 2002) was a Romanian Neoclassical poet of the Communist era. He wrote 23 books of poetry, as well as children's books, essay collections, and a novel. Doinaș was ...

. 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.

Awards

*1978: Eric Gregory Award *1987:

for ''The Irish for No'' *1990: Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for ''Belfast Confetti'' *1993: T. S. Eliot Prize for ''First Language: Poems'' *1997: Yorkshire Post Book Award (Book of the Year) for ''The Star Factory'' *2003:

for ''Breaking News'' *2003: Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) for ''Breaking News''

Death and legacy

Carson died of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma, is a malignant tumor that begins in the lung. Lung cancer is caused by genetic damage to the DNA of cells in the airways, often caused by cigarette smoking or inhaling damaging chemicals. Damaged ...

on 6 October 2019 at the age of 70. In 2020, the Seamus Heaney Centre established two annual

fellowship A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

s in memory of its first director, Ciaran Carson, and inspired by his writing about the city of Belfast in prose as well as poetry.

Bibliography

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 *1989: ''Belfast Confetti'', Gallery Press, 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 *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; 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 *2012: ''In the Light Of'', Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 2013 *2019: ''Still Life'', Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 2020

Prose

*1978: ''The Lost Explorer'', Ulsterman Publications *1986: ''Irish Traditional Music'', Appletree Press *1995: ''Belfast Frescoes'', (with John Kindness) Ulster Museum *1995: ''Letters from the Alphabet'', Gallery Press *1996: ''Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music'', a book about traditional music; Cape; North Point Press (New York), 1997 *1997: ''The Star Factory'', a memoir of Belfast; Granta *1999: ''Fishing for Amber'', Granta *2001: ''Shamrock Tea'', a novel which was longlisted for the Booker Prize; Granta *2009: ''The Pen Friend'', a web of memory, published by Blackstaff Press *2012: ''Exchange Place'', a novel, published by Blackstaff Press

Translations

*2002: '' The Inferno of

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

'' (translator), Granta, awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize *2005: ''The Midnight Court'', (translation of

's ''Cúirt an Mhéan Oíche'', Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 2006 *2007: '' The Táin'', Penguin Classics *2012: ''From Elsewhere'', (translations of Jean Follain's poetry, paired with original poem/meditations on the same) Gallery Press

References

External links

The Triumph in memory of Ciaran Carson by Paul MuldoonSeamus Heaney CentreWake Forest University Press
North American publisher of Carson
''The Journal of Music'', for which Ciaran Carson writes a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music.Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carson, Ciaran 1948 births 2019 deaths 20th-century writers from Northern Ireland 21st-century writers from Northern Ireland Academics of Queen's University Belfast Alumni of Queen's University Belfast Aosdána members Deaths from lung cancer in Northern Ireland Educators from Northern Ireland Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Male novelists from Northern Ireland Male poets from Northern Ireland People educated at St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School, Belfast Translators from Irish Translators from Old English Translators from Old Irish Translators of Brian Merriman Translators of the Táin Bó Cúailnge Translators of Dante Alighieri Writers from Belfast T. S. Eliot Prize winners 20th-century translators Scholars and academics from Belfast