Synopsis
Ciaran Carson won the first-ever T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize for First Language
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About the Author
Born in 1948 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ciaran Carson studied at Queen’s University, Belfast, where, from 2003 2015, he served as the director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Though recently retired from that post, he continues to teach a postgraduate poetry workshop there, in addition to overseeing the Belfast Writers’ Group. Earlier in his career (from 1975 1998), Ciaran Carson acted as an arts officer for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is also a member of Aosdána and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A writer of both poetry and prose fiction and non-fiction alike Ciaran Carson has also translated many texts, including The Midnight Court, a work of the eighteenth-century poet Brian Merriman, and a version of Dante’s The Inferno, which won the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. His other awards include the first-ever T. S. Eliot Prize (1994, for First Language), and the Forward Prize for Best Collection (2003, for Breaking News). As well as being a significant poet and careful translator, Carson is also a scholar of traditional Irish music; he frequently plays the flute alongside his wife, the accomplished Irish fiddler Deirdre Shannon. He has said: I’m not interested in ideologies . . . I’m interested in the words, and how they sound to me, how words connect with experience, of fear, of anxiety . . . Your only responsibility is to the language.”
Review
Carson's ceaseless search for the rare way, the misty way, the unsettling way to say things seems a most vital response. His astounding... lexical reach... are all pressed into the service of nourishing and keeping alive... imagination... in the face of the dead hands of... history and of expectation. --Glyn Maxwell
Fist Language is the craziest, most exciting book I have read for a long time. --Gerald Dawe
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First Language
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Condition: Very Good. 1993. paperback. Keywords: "Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - By Period - 20th Century,Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - General,Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - Poets, A-Z - ( C-D ) -". Not a first edition copy. . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # KHS0038180
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First Language
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Condition: Very Good. 1993. paperback. Keywords: "Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - By Period - 20th Century,Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - General,Subjects - Poetry, Drama & Criticism - Poetry - Poets, A-Z - ( C-D ) -". Not a first edition copy. . . . Seller Inventory # KHS0038180
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First Language
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The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, 1993
ISBN 10: 1852351284
ISBN 13: 9781852351281
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Seller: The Bookshop at Beech Cottage, Newbury, United Kingdom
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Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. 77pp. Collection of twenty-eight poems by Ciaran Carson. Gallery Books series edited by Peter Fallon. Green card covers with yellow and white lettering on front and spine. Cover illustration 'The Wieza Babel' by St. Dobiasz. Red end pages. Previous owner's neat name stamp on inside front cover. Touch of shelf wear to tip of corners and top of spine. Light toning to top page edge. Otherwise in VG+ condition. Seller Inventory # 015783
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First Language
Published by
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ISBN 13: 9781852351281
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