Ciaran Carson is a poet and novelist from Belfast.
Born in 1948, he grew up speaking Irish as his first language. He picked up English words playing out on the streets with friends.
After graduating from Queen’s University Belfast in 1971, Carson worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland as a specialist in traditional music and culture.
An accomplished flautist, his job often involved doing what he describes as "field work" - playing in bars all over Ireland.
Carson went on to become Professor of English at QUB, where he also established and directed the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.
He lived through what came to be known as the The TroublesThe time of unrest and violence in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998.. In 1969 he narrowly missed death when a bullet tore through a taxi he was sitting in on the Falls Road.
Carson has won a number of awards. These include the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection and the Costa Poetry Award.
