Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast. He was Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. He published numerous collections of poetry that have been shortlisted for both the Irish Book Award for Literature and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry. He is the author The Star Factory, a memoir of Belfast, Fishing for Amber, and Shamrock Tea, which was long-listed for the Man Booker prize. Carson's new translation of Dante's Inferno was published to great acclaim. He passed away in Belfast in October 2019.
