The welcome to the 2013 Atlantic Archipelagos Research Project at UGA will feature a reading by poet and novelist Ciaran Carson from Belfast, Ireland. The April 10 reception at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries begins at 7 p.m. The reading will take place in the building’s auditorium.
The conference is organized by the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and supported by a state-of-the-art conference grant from the Office of the Provost. Carson is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including First Language: Poems, which was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; For All We Know; On the Night Watch and Until Before After. Wake Forest University Press has published his work in the U.S., including The Midnight Court, Carson’s translation of the work of the 18th-century Irish poet Brian Merriman and Carson’s Collected Poems.
“Ciaran Carson is one of the most gifted Irish artists of his generation,” said Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Willson Center. “His poetry, prose and music have created new worlds for his readers. The Irish language, Dante, the tin whistle, memory and the city of Belfast merge together in the unique form of Carson’s gift. His papers are collected at Emory University, and we are very fortunate to have Ciaran return to Athens to read from his new work.”