Ciarán Carson was born in Belfast in 1948 and educated at Queen’s University there. He worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1998, with responsibility for Traditional Music and Literature. A musician himself, he has published two books on Irish traditional music, The Pocket Guide to Traditional Music (1986) and Last Night’s Fun (1997). In 2003 he was appointed Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University. His collections of poetry include The Irish for No (1987); Belfast Confetti (1989), which received the Irish Times Literature Prize; First Language (1993), which was awarded the T.S. Eliot prize; and The Twelfth of Never (1998). His most recent volume of poetry is Breaking News (2003). Among his prose works are The Star Factory (1997), Fishing for Amber (2000) and Shamrock Tea (2001). His translation of Dante’s Inferno appeared in 2002 and, from the Irish of Brian Merrimam, Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) in 2005. A translation of the Old Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailgne is forthcoming. He is a member of Aosdána.