Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast in 1948. His poetry collections include The New Estate; The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, which won the Irish Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize; First Language, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize; Opera et Cetera, which was a UK Poetry Book Society Choice; and The Twelfth of Never and The Ballad of HMS Belfast. He has written two prose books, The Pocket Guide to Irish Traditional Music and Last Night's Fun and one novel, Shamrock Tea. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Belfast.Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast in 1948. His poetry collections include The New Estate; The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, which won the Irish Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize; First Language, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize; Opera et Cetera, which was a UK Poetry Book Society Choice; and The Twelfth of Never and The Ballad of HMS Belfast. He has written two prose books, The Pocket Guide to Irish Traditional Music and Last Night's Fun and one novel, Shamrock Tea. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Belfast.