Under (Re)Construction – Belfast in the Poetry and Prose of Ciaran Carson

Abstract

Ciaran Carson’s poetry is deeply concerned with the city of Belfast, as many of the poems unfold their twisting itinerary against the active background of this northern urban location. In addition to the poems Carson has published a fair number of prose pieces and a tentative autobiography, which also resurrects the city in its dynamism, though on a different timescale. The poems and the prose pieces together constitute a narrative of the changing city with the conclusion that the most apparent element of permanence in the context of the city is change itself, which leads to a strained relationship between the city and the map representing it.