Opera et Cetera by Ciaran Carson
Ciaran Carson is one of Ulster’s finest and most forceful poets, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1993 for First Language. That collection saw the first airing of a new narrative technique used throughout Opera Et Cetera: long-lined rhyming couplets echoing Irish ballad metre with its criss-cross assonances. These innovative new poems contemplate the structure and authority of language. The book is framed by two long sequences, one based on the letters of the alphabet, the other on radio operator’s code; as distorting mirrors of each other, they continually call into question how we tell each other stories all the time. Two other sequences complete the book: Et Cetera plays with the near-moribund vocabulary of Latin tags, while Alibi consists of versions from Romanian poet Stefan Augustin Doinas. In its juggling with the nuts and bolts of words, in its obsessive musical sweep, Opera Et Cetera is a tour de force. It is also, sometimes, very funny. Poetry Book Society Choice.
In Carson's pithy, strongly consonantal idiom, language makes itself an insistent part of the subject.. Carson is a prodigal and hilarious exploiter of sound. -- Sean O'Brien * Sunday Times *
Ciaran Carson (1948-2019) was the author of nine books of poetry and four prose works, and the winner of several awards including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection for Breaking News in 2003. His translation of Dante’s Inferno won the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. He held positions in the Traditional Music and Literature departments of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland between 1975 to 1998, and was the Founding Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast until his retirement in 2016.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852243968 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852243961 |
| Title | Opera et Cetera |
| Author | Ciaran Carson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1996-07-25 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |