Liam Carson

Liam Carson

@liamcarson.bsky.social

Author of memoir Call Mother a Lonely Field. Haiku poet (first collection Belfast Twilight just published by Salmon Poetry). Director of IMRAM Féile Litríochta Gaeilge/Irish-language Literature Festival.

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Seeing people singing and dancing with joy on the streets of Belgrade and São Paulo is truly inspiring. The forces of darkness can be defeated. There is hope.

D'éirigh thar na bearta le Pygmalion 26 i gCorcaigh aréir, is tá muidne iontach bródiúl as an éacht a rinne Eithne s'againne (agus gach duine sa léiriú).

You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. - Rainer Maria Rilke Painting of Rilke: Leonid Pasternak

Maybe poetry is about finding poetry in all things. An elliptical definition. It is also a world to enter. I read Frederike Mayröcker's prose poems; I am in her Vienna apartment , looking out her window, recalling beauty, voyaging into the eeriness of the everyday. She writes, her eyes blaze.

Haiku found in fleurs by Frederike Mayröcker woman with hood walking stick and lantern sees the fragile moon-flower on the ottoman a little dog sleeping sparkling stars on the window ample woodland in my writing room i set off on a ramble

Haiku found in fleurs by Frederike Mayröcker lies in state on a bit of cloth dead bee early morning already a little bird trills a funeral dirge the bushes begin to wither a swallow flies south the moon rising over rowan woods an inner voice speaks the cosmos is a rosebud yes, my shaman

Haiku found in fleurs by Frederike Mayröcker amidst gravestones nut trees in whose crowns fruit is hanging lightning bolts dash the grass so very damp and soft dark leaves in the sweet deciduous sorrow woods we follow footprints of poesy icicle-land of January

Haiku found in fleurs by Frederike Mayröcker long since withered the cherry blossom branch you gifted me melancholy thought the watch is still ticking on his wrist in the grave polyphonic the golden bird-world early morning in July over your bed in the first light of dawn a swallow flies

Belfast night on the bouncer's arms tattooed snakes writhe talk in Irish of which spuds are best the flags of Sandy Row Botanic Avenue the swish of taxis in the rainy night

TOMORROW! A gala bi-lingual poetry reading in Irish and English with Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha. BAIRD IMRAM AR CHAMPAS: Béal Feirste/Belfast 📅 Déardaoin, 24 Meán Fómhair 2026 🕠 5.30pm 📲 Booking: seamusheaneycentre.com/Events/

gone in a puff shreds of tobacco blown in the autumn wind something hides in the bushes the cat's eyes do not blink through the open window shouts from a football match Indian summer night

Bookshops in Belfast, all gone now. They were the heart of the city for me - I could spend the entire day wandering from one to the other. Chess books in Marshall's; Marvel comics and SF books in Harry Hall's; poetry zines and anarchist tracts in Just Books, listening to records in their café.

My old poet pal John Hughes just posted this, from Donna Stonecipher's great collection The Ruins of Nostalgia. It reminded me of how Starbucks took over a lot of independent cafés in Dublin, or put them out of business. I alway laugh at the notion that capitalism gives you choice.

a woman’s voice turns into birdsong music of a summer night woman talks of gathering wool then weaves her song singer’s lament how bears and wolves once walked the land night in Wales high in the mountains where horses once ran wild