COLLECTED POEMS

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Hardcover issue. Publisher's original black cloth with titles in gilt to the spine, in the Howard Hodgkin illustrated dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents are clean throughout, and without previous owner's inscriptions or stamps. Complete with fine original dustwrapper that is without fading, loss or tears.

Signed by the Ciaran Carson in black ink on the title page. The first edition was published in simultaneous paperback and hardback editions, on 9 October 2008. This collection features poems from 'The New Estate and Other Poems' (1988), 'The Irish for No (1987)', 'Belfast Confetti' (1989), 'First Language' (1993), 'Opera Et Cetera' (1996), 'The Twelfth of Never' (2001), 'Breaking News' (2003), and 'For All We Know' (2008). The poems are printed in this volume without any indication of publishing history, provenance, or chronology (the contents, however, are given in roughly chronological order). Award-winning Northern Irish poet, novelist, and translator Ciaran Carson (1948-2019) published 15 volumes of poetry and a number of books about The Troubles during his prolific career. In 2004, he became the first director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast until his retirement in 2016. This position was a natural fit for Carson, as Heaney was one of his tutors at Queen's during his undergraduate years. A longstanding member of Aosdána, the Affiliation of Creative Artists in Ireland, Carson's influences also included Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Keats, Borges, Calvino, Flann O'Brien, and Alberto Manguel (The Guardian, 2019). Carson passed away at the age of 70 on 6th October 2019 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.