Fun Facts Friday: Ciarán Carson

Ciarán Gerard Carson (9 October 1948 – 6 October 2019) was an award winning writer and poet from Northern Ireland.

Books by Ciarán Carson*

1. Mr. Carson was born in Belfast to a middle class family. His father was a postman and his mother worked in linen mills.
2. After high-school, the author attended Queen’s University, Belfast and got a degree in English.
3. At the university one of his tutors was Seamus Heaney, and two other poets, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon, were fellow students.
4. After graduating, Mr. Carson worked as the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
5. Part of his responsibility for traditional music. He traveled all over Ireland, playing the flute and the tin whistle in pubs and back rooms.
6. During his performances, Mr. Carson was accompanied many times by a gifted fiddle player named Deirdre Shannon.
   They married in 1982.
7. In his writing, Mr. Carson was able to combine mock-pedantic scholarship with the traditional storytelling Irish dialect, infused with postmodernist devices.
8. The poet’s work took a look at recent history, including the violence in the region. His work was both personal and political.
9. He wrote several books, both prose and history, involving music and the history of Irish plays.
10. Mr. Carson died of lung cancer.

Books by Ciarán Carson*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account