RELEASED: Oct. 24, 2002

DANVILLE, KY—The Centre College English Program and the Division of Humanities is co-sponsoring a poetry reading by noted Irish poet and musician Ciaran Carson. The reading will take place on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. in the fourth-floor boardroom of Centre's
Norton Center for the Arts.

Carson was born in Belfast in 1948 and was educated at The Queen's University there. He intimately knows not only urban Belfast, in which he was raised as a native Irish speaker, but also the traditions of rural Ireland. A traditional musician and a scholar of the Irish oral tradition, Carson has served as the traditional arts officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is also a flutist, tinwhistler and singer. He brings some of these elements to his readings, along with a wonderful sense of timing in storytelling.

Helen Emmitt, Centre associate professor of English, comments, "We are extremely proud that Ciaran Carson, one of the most exciting poets of his generation, will be reading his poetry here on Oct. 29. The Belfast native's poems are witty, touching and sometimes shocking. As his reading will no doubt show, he's a sort of Renaissance man, mixing his own work both with his stunning translations of poems in many languages and with traditional Irish music."

Carson's black humor, satire, and playful and serious interests in wordplay make him, as Ben Howard described in Shenandoah, a retrospective of Carson's career, "one of the most gifted poets now writing in England and Ireland." Carson lives in Belfast with his wife, fiddle player Deirdre Shannon, and three young children.

Carson has written many books of verse including Belfast Confetti, First Language, The Irish for No, and Opera et Cetera as well as The Pocket Guide to Irish Music and Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music, a whimsical look at the world of traditional music. Carson's books of prose include The Star Factory, Fishing for Amber and Shamrock Tea, books that embrace myth and magic, interweaving stories, history and meditations on time and language.

Carson's writings have been widely recognized by critics. He has won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize and the Irish Times Literature Prize as well as the Butler Literary Award for Poetry. Granta will publish Carson's translation of Dante's Inferno in November.

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