Ciaran Carson Book order

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.

"Translations and responses to the French poet Jean Follain." Book does not seem to contain direct French translations.

Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast and has spent his life there. In this memoir, he makes himself the cartographer of his home city's spaces, symbolic and literal, the scribe of its byways and avenues.

'From Elsewhere' features translations from the French poet Jean Follain faced by 'original' poems inspired by those translations: spins and takes on them, in other words.

`Exchange Place is gloriously uncategorisable. Robbe-Grillet would have welcomed it ... Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler too would have tipped the brims of their trilbys in salute. A wonderful intellectual romp.' John Banville

More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives thirteen postcards from old flame Nina, each one provoking memories about their life together in 1980s Belfast and reveries on subjects such as the Troubles, his father, Esperanto and fountain pens.

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.