The Irish for No

by Ciaran Carson

‘a marvellous work of art, part verse, part prose, part haiku, part beautifully controlled long, loose lines. 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, The Sunday Times, Books of the Year‘
‘Carson is one of the most original poets now at work in this country . . . 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, The Irish Times
‘a quite exceptional and original talent . . . There is a continuous large effort under way here, one that may well turn out to be among the most enduring artistic products of Northern Ireland since 1968.’ — Neil Corcoran, TLS

Genres: Poetry, Ireland

63 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2006

About the author

Ciaran Gerard Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast and educated at The Queen’s University, Belfast. He knows intimately not only the 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 traditional, Carson was long the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and is a flutist, tinwhistler, and singer. He is Chair of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre for poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is married to fiddle player Deirdre Shannon, and has three children.

He is author of over a dozen volumes of poetry, as well as translations of the Táin and of Dante’s Inferno, and novels, non-fiction, and a guide to traditional Irish music. Carson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978.

Reviews

[Lanea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me begin by inviting you into the club: there is no word in Irish, or in any of the Celtic languages, for "no." Nor is there a word for "yes." Rather, answering yes or no requires the speaker to conjugate the verb into its positive or negative form. If you ask me "Are you going to the store today?" in Irish, I would have to answer either "I am going to the store" or "I am not going to the store."
The importance of these linguistic oddments varies from one speaker or linguist to another. In many classrooms, the difficulty has turned into a bit of a game--how can you translate campaign slogans (i.e. "No new taxes") and still have them sound snappy? In Northern Ireland, particularly in nationalist communities, the lack of a native "No" has been relatively important over the years. Imagine attempting to make a bit of a slogan in your native tongue to refuse actions by an English-speaking government you reject--tough, eh?

Right, so, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Carson is a fine writer. In poetry, his dense, velvety language is even further compressed. His memory of bygone Belfast geographies is entrancing. And, he gets me with this every time, the man discusses the needle arts practiced by his mother and aunts lovingly. It is not a tome of poems about knitting or quilting, but it is a book of poems in which his mother, a needle-woman, appears as a shining example of thrift and talent and creative expressions of love. That alone makes the book worth reading, in my eyes. I loved it, savored it, reread it a few times, and will likely reread it several more times in my life.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

2/31

Oops. I had forgotten I had already ready this, and I do like to read collections I have not yet read--though that is not a restriction of the Sealey Challenge. Lucky for me, I picked up another collection of newly released poetry today, so I'll see if I can read that tonight.

But this one, a second spin through. I spent time in Belfast two springs ago, and there is so much about that city that just sticks with you. And Ciaran Carson layers the mundane (the street names, the long repetitive story told bar-side, the lineage of an uncle who looks like everyone else and so not himself but is only himself) with the trauma of The Troubles. An intensely personal and public collection that resonates because there is no Irish for no (or for yes, for that matter), only a language of assent or denial. And this collection does neither. Instead it asks questions, layers upon layers upon layers.

#SealeyChallenge #CiaranCarson

Belfast Confetti

Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks,
Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion
Itself—an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire…
I was trying to complete a sentence in my head, but it kept stuttering.
All the alleyways and side-streets blocked with stops and colons.

I know this labyrinth so well—Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street—
Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again.
A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies. What is
My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks.

–Ciaran Carson

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

still that same interest in objects from the first collection but in a way that's less static or precious; nappies, wastegrounds, cardboard boxes, tins. there's an accretive effect to the way we encounter them, often in the form of lists and I found it a bit difficult to pick my way through the impressionism and fragments. once I started to see the repetition of certain images and specific lines about trying to find one's way through things and seeing where you were going to end up condensing out of the flow of the present moment I was able to relax into the receptive state I should have been in in the first place.

certain interest in the lives of people who are touched, harmless or fucked up. emphases on their vision and worldview encourages me to see it as a commentary on an intractable political situation

[Leilanie Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the poems in this collection resonated with me and others not so much. The couple that stood out the most were 'Two Winos' about a couple of men drinking British wine and dawdling while watching the clouds, barely comprehensible to one another, but suddenly it appears that the bottle is half-full rather than half-empty, and 'Snowball' about a lady in white, dressed to the nines by the Albert clock in Belfast, known to those of a certain age to be a place where ladies of the evening went for trade. Interesting enough overall, read this in the library where I work.

[Tula or KathyPotter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems. Difficult read...unless you know some Irish History. Difficult History...unless you know some Irish.