Against Time

Abstract

This chapter offers a detailed reading of Ciaran Carson’s final book, written while he was dying of cancer. It consists entirely of ekphrastic poems about paintings by, inter alia, Patinir, Poussin, Monet and contemporary Irish painters. The chapter explores the way Carson creates a form of autobiographical record out of the attention he gives the paintings, which are usually pondered in their reproduced form in art books and internet representations. Attention is paid to the way Carson constructs narratives out of the paintings, sometimes by charting his domestic life, the progress of his illness and memories of Belfast in turmoil along with his pondering of the paintings themselves. The chapter also explores the way these poems engage with forms of art history too, notably with the work of T. J. Clark. The proposal is that these extraordinary final works invent a novel kind of poetic ekphrasis.