Ciaran Carson
Poem of the Week: “John Constable, Study of Clouds, 1822,” by Ciaran Carson
‘The sound of water escaping from mill dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks,
Slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things, said Constable.…
Poem of the Week: “Turn Again” by Ciaran Carson
There is a map of the city which shows the bridge that was never built.
A map which shows the bridge that collapsed; the streets that never existed.
Ciaran Carson, 1948–2019
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of one of our most esteemed poets, Ciaran Carson. Ciaran had been with us from the beginning, and we will miss him. Our hearts go out to his wife and children, Deirdre, Manus, Gerard, and Mary.
Continue ReadingPublication Day for FROM THERE TO HERE
Starting with his 1976 publication of THE NEW ESTATE and finishing with the call-and-response translation work in FROM ELSEWHERE (2014), Carson guides us through his imaginative landscape in a new selection that includes poems from thirteen volumes written over nearly forty years.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “A l’écoute: Receiver / All Clear” by Ciaran Carson
In the final week of National Translation Month, we’re featuring a unique kind of translation act. In From Elsewhere, Ciaran Carson translates poems by the French poet Jean Follain. However, the volume is different in that Carson pairs these translations with original poems inspired by them: “Translations of the translations,” as he explains in the preface….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Peace” by Ciaran Carson
Back then, you wouldn’t know from one day to the next what might
happen next. Everything was, as it were, provisional…
Video Highlights from Ciaran Carson’s Wake Forest Reading
Ciaran Carson recently visited Wake Forest University and gave an enchanting reading on campus. He read from his latest collection, From Elsewhere, and played traditional Irish tunes with his wife, fiddler Deirdre Shannon. Watch the video highlights from this wonderful evening!
Continue ReadingCiaran Carson is coming, so we broke out the letterpress
We’re all incredibly excited for Ciaran Carson’s reading here at Wake Forest next week, so we thought that we would share some of what we’ve been doing to make the time pass more quickly. WFU Press intern Sophie Leveque worked with Craig Fansler of ZSR Library to design a broadside for the reading.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: Happy Birthday, Ciaran Carson!
Today is Ciaran Carson’s birthday, and in celebration of this accomplished poet and traditional musician from Belfast, we are sharing one of his earlier poems, “The Albatross,” from his book First Language as our featured poem this week. This poem is written after the poem “L’Albatros” by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. In it, the speaker compares the…
Continue ReadingCiaran Carson on tour in the U.S. next month
We are pleased to announce that Ciaran Carson will be on tour in the U.S. this November. If you’ve never had the opportunity to see him read his work, you’re in for a treat. His lively readings combine poetry with traditional Irish music, making for a delightful and festive evening. A quick search on YouTube…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: October Thoughts & Throwback
WFU Press’s newest book is here! Ciaran Carson’s From Elsewhere is a beautiful work featuring translations of the French poet Jean Follain juxtaposed alongside Carson’s original work. In his “Apropros,” Carson offers, “…[T]he word fetch…was in my mind throughout the writing of From Elsewhere.” He goes on to say, “A fetch is the act of fetching, bringing from a distance,…
Continue ReadingThe secret is out… Announcing our latest book, The Shack.
Today’s the day! It’s finally here! We’ve been waiting so long to tell you about our newest book, The Shack: Irish Poets in the Foothills and Mountains of the Blue Ridge, that it’s hard to believe we can finally talk about it. In The Shack, contemporary Irish poets reflect on their time in the foothills and mountains…
Continue ReadingRevealing Ciaran Carson’s From Elsewhere Cover
This April, we’ll be releasing the North American edition of Ciaran Carson’s From Elsewhere and we are pleased to reveal the cover design. In From Elsewhere, Carson translates poems by the French poet Jean Follain and includes his own riffs inspired by these poems. The book’s cover points to Carson’s interest in translation and reflection, with the water…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week:”Pas de Deux”
A poem for Valentine’s Day– Pas de Deux It all began in Take Two, what with us looking at clothes. You’d brushed against me as I stepped aside from the mirror to let you size yourself up against a blue pencil skirt, pinching its waistband to your waist with your arms akimbo. I caught you…
Continue Reading5 things we’re looking forward to in 2015
Though it may look like we’re late to the “Top 10 list” train that hits at the end of each year, we thought it might be nice to look forward rather than back. Here are a few things we’re looking forward to this year: 1. Yeats turns 150! 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of W.B. Yeats’s…
Continue ReadingHappy birthday to Ciaran Carson
Author of poetry and prose, translator, professor, and accomplished musician, Ciaran Carson is a man of so many talents that we never need much of an excuse to celebrate him. Many happy returns to you, from all at Wake Forest Press! Year After Year playing the tune over you’ve been cutting out the frills getting to…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Proposal” by Ciaran Carson
Proposal It happened over an apple. We were in a market, sunshine and August showers flickering through the glazed roof over a barrel of apples, green with a blush of red, the dew still seeming to glisten on them. You picked one up. Try it and see, Miss, said the vendor. You nodded, and bit…
Continue ReadingThe Falls Road: Carson’s childhood neighborhood
WFUP poet Ciaran Carson, native of Belfast and resident still, has written intimately about his experiences in the most urban sections of the city. This week, The Irish Times published a review of a new book of photographs taken in the late 1960s through the 1970s on the Falls Road, a portion of Belfast known for violent clashes,…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Punctuation” by Ciaran Carson
By Michael J. Bennett (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Punctuation This frosty night is jittering with lines and angles, invisible trajectories: Crackly, chalky diagrams in geometry, rubbed out the instant they’re sketched, But lingering in the head. The shots, the echoes, are like whips, and when you flinch, You don’t know where it’s coming from. This…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Demotic Nocturne” by Ciaran Carson
The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, a painting by John Martin (1789-1854) In the spirit of Halloween we offer Ciaran Carson’s “Demotic Nocturne”, a tantalizing and chilling nighttime adventure that takes the reader on a technicolor journey that “disperses all the boundaries of hearth and home.” “Demotic Nocturne” appears in Carson’s collection In the Light Of, translated from Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Demotic Nocturne (Nocturne vulgaire) A breath…
Continue ReadingBook of the Month: Ciaran Carson’s BELFAST CONFETTI … “raining exclamation marks”
Ciaran Carson’s “Belfast Confetti” is one of my favorite poems. A copy is mounted above the desk where we work at the Press and I glance up at it while typing, editing, and occasionally gazing off into space. Every time I read it, I notice something new. I was surprised when I read through…
Continue Reading‘Tis the season for poetry readings
Everyone knows that poetry is best when listened to, so kick back, relax and belatedly celebrate National Poetry Day with some readings from our poets. Ciaran Carson reading “Snow” from Belfast Confetti Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin reads from The Sun-Fish Paula Meehan reads her poem “Death of a Field” from Painting Rain Michael Longley reads “Harmonica” from his Collected Poems Vona…
Continue ReadingBanned Books Week
It’s Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read, sponsored by the American Library Association. From September 22nd-28th, people are encouraged to read previously banned or challenged books. Since 1982, more than 11,300 books have been challenged, or attacked and almost removed due to content. One of our books, The Midnight Court translated by…
Continue ReadingRemarks on Carson’s “The Fetch,” from For All We Know, Part Two
The Fetch I woke. You were lying beside me in the double bed, prone, your long dark hair fanned out over the downy pillow. I’d been dreaming we stood on a beach an ocean away watching the waves purl into their troughs and tumble over. Knit one, purl two, you said. Something in your voice…
Continue ReadingReading Carson’s “The Fetch,” from For All We Know, Part One
The Fetch To see one’s own doppelganger is an omen of death. The doppelganger casts no reflection in a mirror. Shelley saw himself swimming towards himself before he drowned. Lincoln met his fetch at the stage door before he was shot. It puts me in mind of prisoners interrogated, of one telling his story so…
Continue Reading“Belfast Confetti,” Writers Workshops, and Modern Security
“The subversive half-brick, conveniently hand-sized, is an essential ingredient of the ammunition known as ‘Belfast confetti’, and has been tried and trusted by a generation of rioters.”–Ciaran Carson, “Brick” What happens when the “real world” gets in the way of creativity? Glenn Patterson happened to be leading a workshop for the Fermanaugh Writers in Enniskellen–while…
Continue ReadingCiaran Carson to Read at UGA on April 10th
One of WFUP’s most distinguished poets, Ciaran Carson, will be reading selections of his work at the University of Georgia this week, on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 7 PM. The university is hosting the 2013 Atlantic Archipelagos Research Project, and Carson’s reading will be a feature of the welcome ceremony. The event reflects on elements…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Belfast Confetti” by Ciaran Carson
With Ciaran Carson reading in Boston and Athens, GA this week, we thought it might be fun to share one of our Carson favorites, “Belfast Confetti.” Belfast Confetti Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks, Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion Itself—an asterisk on…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Oscar” by Ciaran Carson
Ever wish you could experience winning an Oscar? In light of last weekend’s Academy Awards, today we present you that opportunity, courtesy of one of our most popular poets, Ciaran Carson. Oscar I held the figurine aloft, revelling in my actor’s gravestone smile; I boldly faced an orchestra of flash, as paparazzi packed the aisle. I thanked everyone: all…
Continue ReadingDid you know…
Poet and Belfast native Ciaran Carson was raised as a native Irish speaker by his parents, who were NOT raised as native speakers, but … here is how Carson explains it in a 2004 remembrance of his father, a postman who was also an Esperanto speaker: It was in the Belfast GPO [General Post Office]…
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