Call Mother a Lonely Field

Shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2013

Call Mother a Lonely Field mines the emotional archaeology of family, home and language, the author s attempts to break their tethers, and the refuge he finds within them. Carson confronts the complex relationship between a son thinking in English, a father dreaming in Irish in a room just off the reality I knew , and a mother who, after raising five children through Irish, is no longer comfortable speaking it in the violent reality of 1970s Belfast.

The author s Irish-speaking, West Belfast childhood is described through still-present echoes of the Second World War, dystopian science fiction, American comic books and punk rock. At the same time he explores how Irish language, literature and stories are transmitted from mouth to mouth. After years in London and Dublin, the deaths of his parents bring Liam Carson a new sense of community and understanding as he heals his fractured relationship with Irish. His rediscovery of the language as a sanctuary is central to a book exploring the potency of vanishing worlds, be they childhood, a city or a way of life.

Carson was born in 1962. Liam was educated in a Catholic School in Belfast before reading English literature and philosophy at UCD. During the 1980s he lived in squats in Brixton and Kennington in London and worked in a variety of blue collar jobs. Returning to Ireland he worked for many years as a publicist for a variety of publishers. He is currently the director of the IMRAM Irish Language Literature Festival, which he founded in 2004. His reviews, critical articles, essays and poems have appeared in a wide range of periodicals, including Poetry Ireland Review, Fortnight, The Irish Review, New Hibernia Review, Comhar, An Guth, Irish Examiner and Sunday Tribune.