Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry

Ciaran Carson: Collected Poems (paperback)

Ciaran Carson's Collected Poems gathers work from his eight shape-changing volumes. With each volume, this award-winning poet reinvents the very ground from which his poetry springs.

"...Ciaran Carson's much anticipated Collected Poems establishes him--for those who still need convincing--as a major poet both within and outside the borders of his native Northern Ireland. The book, which includes eight collections over the pat thirty years, is unlike many volumes of collected poems, which pay homage to the poet's best years. Carson's Collected is, by contrast, more overture than coda. Not content to rest on past sucesses and revisit old forms, Carson offers risky innovations with each new collection, allowing for new readings not only of Northern ireland but of the poetic line itself." Heather Clark, Harvard Review Online

"At nearly 600 pages, this Collected Poems provides the best introduction to one of Ireland's most interesting contemporary writers. By revealing his persistent recuperation and reworking of motifs from across his career so far, it may also make experienced readers see his work in a new light. Perfection is mainly the goal of miniature; the majority of these poems have other goals and other strengths. In his consistently experimental writing, Carson's investigations of his medium and of the world become a single task." Paul Franz, Bookslut 

"Carson's Collected does its job; it reminds us that Carson is a poet of sustained authority and resourcefulness, arguably the best writing in English to have emerged in the past 25 years." Michael Hinds,  Irish Times

April  2009

ISBN 978-1-930630-45-1    paperback   $19.95