Ciaran Carson
Literature
Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast in 1948. He graduated from Queens University in 1971, and later joined the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, specialising in traditional music. Ciaran Carson lives in north Belfast with his wife, Deirdre Shannon, and their three children.
He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978. 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 Prize.
His prose includes The Star Factory (1997) and Fishing for Amber (1999). His novel, Shamrock Tea (2001), explores themes present in Jan van Eycks 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). For All We Know (2008)was shortlisted for both the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award.
Ciaran 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.
“I can’t as a writer, take any kind of moral stance on the “Troubles”, beyond registering what happens. And then, as soon as I say that, I realise that ‘registering’ is a kind of morality. Nor can one, even if one wanted to, escape politics. But my aim was, in that work which deals with the “troubles”, to act as a camera or a tape-recorder, and present things in a kind of edited surreality. An ear overhearing things in bars. Snatches of black Belfast humour. If there’s one thing certain about what was or is going on, it’s that you don’t know the half of it. The official account is only an account, and there are many others. Poetry offers yet another alternative. It asks questions, I think. It asks about the truth which is never black-and-white.”
Ciaran Carson (from In The Chair, Salmon Publishing, interview with John Brown conducted in September 2000)
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
2012: In the Light Of, Gallery Press
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
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 (translator), Granta, awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
2005: The Midnight Court, (translation of Brian Merriman’s Cúirt an Mhéan Oíche, Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 2006
2007: The Táin, Penguin Classics
Prizes and awards
1978: Eric Gregory Award
1987: Alice Hunt Bartlett Award 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: Cholmondeley Award for Breaking News
2003: Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) for Breaking News