Bøger af Ciaran Carson

Tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, Queen and King of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cualige.

In Still Life, Ciaran Carson guides us through centuries of art and around the Belfast Waterworks where he walks with his wife, Deirdre; into the chemo ward; into memory and the allusive quicksilver of his mind, always bidding us to look carefully at the details of a painter's canvas, as well as the sunlight of day. This master translator chooses here to translate the painter's brush with the poet's pen, finding resemblances, echoes, and parallels. A thorn becomes the nib of a writer's pencil and the pointed pipette of a chemo drip entering the poet's vein. Yet, Deirdre stands as much in the center of these poems as do the paintings. At times, the two seem to escape into the paintings themselves: "Standing by the high farmstead in the upper left of the picture--there!--in a patch of / sunlight. ... They could be us, out for a walk." Balancing the desire to escape into the stillness and permanence of art with the insistent yearning to be fully present in each moment, Carson reminds us--"Look! ... There!"--that in the midst of illness, even in the face of death, there is, still, life.

Last Night's Fun's is a sparking celebration of music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. Last Night's Fun is remarkable for its liveliness, honesty, scholarship, and spontaneous joy; certainly there has never been a book about Irish music like this one, and few books ever written anywhere about the experience of music can compare with it.

Belfast Confetti, Ciaran Carson's third book of poetry, weaves together in a carefully sequenced volume prose pieces, long poems, lyrics, and haiku. His subjects include the permeable boundaries of Belfast neighborhoods, of memory, of public and private fear, and, indeed, of the forms of language and art. Carson finds unexpected uses--constructive and destructive--of the building rubble of Belfast history. Rich in lore of place, these innovative and vividly fresh poems draw deeply on traditions--oral, local, and literary.

'I write to try to see you as you were, or what you have become. You left no forwarding address: that was part of your intention. For when we wrote those letters to each other all those years ago, we wrote as much for ourselves as for each other.'More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives a cryptic postcard from old flame Nina. It is the first of thirteen cards from her, each one provoking a series of reveries about their life together in 1980s Belfast.The Pen Friend is, however, much more than a love story. As Gabriel teases out the significance of the cards, his reveries develop into richly textured meditations on writing, memory, spiritualism and surveillance. The result is an intricate web of fact and fiction - moving easily between such varied subjects as the Troubles, Esperanto and John Lavery - a strange and wonderful novel by one of our finest Irish writers.If you enjoyed The Pen Friend, you might also enjoy Ciaran Carson's Exchange Place, a brilliant thriller set in Paris and Belfast.

This compendium, made from Ciaran Carson's previous collections, reveals one of the most remarkable and sustained tours de force in contemporary poetry: the poet's reimaginign of his native city of Belfast. Carson introduces the reader to a city as full of surreal narrative and imaginative possibility as Borges' Buenos Aires or Calvino's Venice; at the same time he never shirks from taking a hard look at the city in all its political and cultural complexity. In its refusal to simplify or romanticize, The Ballad of HMS Belfast is an indispensable guidebook to a city few will know exists. 'He is the master of the long line; these poems are manic, frightening and funny, and somehow manage to catch the tone of life in modern Belfast' John Banville, Irish Times 'It is about Belfast past and present and is full of surprises, savage and witty, human and extravagant. His voice is truly original, both intelligent and passionate' A. S. Byatt, Sunday Times Books of the Year