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Ciaran Carson

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Ciaran Carson
Born(1948-10-09)9 October 1948
Belfast,Northern Ireland
Died6 October 2019(2019-10-06)(aged 70)
Belfast, Northern Ireland
EducationSt. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School, Belfast
Queen's University, Belfast
Notable awardsEric Gregory Award(1978)
Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize(1987)
T. S. Eliot Prize(1993)
Cholmondeley Award(2003)
Forward Poetry Prize(2003)

Ciaran Gerard Carson(9 October 1948 – 6 October 2019) was aNorthern Ireland-born poet and novelist.

Early life and education[edit]

Ciaran Carson was born on 9 October 1948[citation needed]inBelfastinto anIrish-speakingfamily. His father, William, was a postman and his mother, Mary, worked in the linen mills. He spent his early years in the lowerFalls Roadwhere he attended Slate Street School and then St. Gall's Primary School, both of which subsequently closed. He then attendedSt. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar Schoolbefore proceeding toQueen's University, Belfast(QUB) to read for a degree in English.[1]

Career[edit]

After graduation, he worked for over twenty years as the Traditional Arts Officer of theArts Council of Northern Ireland.[2]

In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of English at QUB where he established and was the Director of theSeamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.[2]

He retired in 2016 but remained attached to the organisation on a part-time basis.[3]

Work[edit]

His collections of poetry includeThe Irish for No(1987), winner of theAlice Hunt Bartlett Prize;Belfast Confetti(1990), which won theIrish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry;andFirst Language: Poems(1993), winner of theT. S. Eliot Prize.His prose includesThe Star Factory(1997) andFishing for Amber(1999). His novelShamrock Tea(2001), explores themes present inJan van Eyck's painting The Arnolfini Marriage. His translation ofDante'sInfernowas published in November 2002.Breaking News,(2003), won theForward Poetry Prize(Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and aCholmondeley Award.[2]His translation ofBrian Merriman'sThe Midnight Courtcame out in 2006.For All We Knowwas published in 2008, and hisCollected Poemswere published in Ireland in 2008, and in North America in 2009.[4]

He was also an accomplished musician, and the author ofLast Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music(1996), a study of Irish traditional music.[2]He wrote a bi-monthly column on traditional Irish music forThe Journal of Music.In 2007 his translation of the early Irish epicTáin Bó Cúailnge,calledThe Táin,was published by Penguin Classics.[5]

Two months before he died he publishedClaude Monet, "The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil", 1880inThe New Yorker.Its last lines were:[6]

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[edit]

Carson managed an unusual marriage in his work between the Irish vernacular story-telling tradition and the witty elusive mock-pedantic scholarship ofPaul Muldoon.[2](Muldoon also combines both modes). In a trivial sense, what differentiates them is line length. As Carol Rumens pointed out 'Before the 1987 publication ofThe Irish for No,Carson was a quiet, solid worker in the groves ofHeaney.But at that point, he rebelled into language, set free by a rangy "long line" that was attributed variously to the influence ofC. K. Williams,Louis MacNeiceand traditional music'.

Carson's first book wasThe New Estate(1976).[7]In the ten years beforeThe Irish for No(1987) he perfected a new style which effected a unique fusion of traditional storytelling with postmodernist devices. The first poem inThe 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 ofThe Irish for Nowas 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 asthe Troublesthemselves. 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...'

InFirst Language(1993), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize, language has become the subject. There are translations ofOvid,RimbaudandBaudelaire.Carson was deeply influenced byLouis MacNeiceand 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 musicLast Night's Fun(1996) is regarded as a classic).[citation needed]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 Alpha bet and another series on Latin tags such as 'Solvitur Ambulando' and 'Quod Erat Demonstrandum' and another series of translations from the Romanian poetȘtefan Augustin Doinaș.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 publishedThe 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[edit]

Death and legacy[edit]

Carson died oflung canceron 6 October 2019 at the age of 70.[8][9]

In 2020, the Seamus Heaney Centre established two annualfellowshipsin memory of its first director, Ciaran Carson, and inspired by his writing about the city of Belfast in prose as well as poetry.[10]

Bibliography[edit]

Poetry[edit]

  • 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[edit]

  • 1978:The Lost Explorer,Ulsterman Publications
  • 1986:Irish Traditional Music,Appletree Press
  • 1995:Belfast Frescoes,(withJohn 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), 1997ISBN0-86547-511-3
  • 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[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^"Award winning Belfast poet Ciaran Carson passes away aged 70".Belfast Telegraph.6 October 2019.Retrieved7 October2019.
  2. ^abcde"Tributes to late Belfast poet Ciaran Carson, who inspired so many with his 'inventive and roomy imagination'".Belfast Telegraph.7 October 2019.Retrieved7 October2019.
  3. ^"Professor Ciaran Carson | Queen's University Belfast".qub.ac.uk.Archived fromthe originalon 2 July 2017.Retrieved7 December2017.
  4. ^"Collected poems by Ciaran Carson".Wake Forest University Press.Retrieved13 May2020.
  5. ^Carson, Ciaran (2008).The Táin: a new translation of the Táin bó Cúailnge.Penguin.ISBN9780140455304.
  6. ^"Claude Monet," The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil, "1880".The New Yorker.Retrieved13 May2020.
  7. ^"Ciaran Carson".Belfast Group.Retrieved7 October2019.
  8. ^Craig, Patricia (6 October 2019)."Ciaran Carson obituary".The Guardian.Retrieved7 October2019.
  9. ^Genzlinger, Neil (9 October 2019)."Ciaran Carson, Versatile Belfast Poet, Is Dead at 70".The New York Times.Retrieved9 October2019.
  10. ^"Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellowships - Expression of Interest".Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.10 April 2019.Retrieved17 June2022.

External links[edit]

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