First Language

Summary

This debut prize-winning collection navigates the fractured linguistic and political landscape of Belfast, drawing on Irish myth, translation theory, and the lived textures of urban conflict to explore questions of identity and belonging. Carson's verse is shaped by the long, sinuous line he developed from traditional Irish music, giving his poems a restless, percussive momentum unlike anything else in contemporary poetry. The collection announced him as an essential voice in a Northern Irish tradition already rich with Heaney and Mahon.