The Irish for No is ‘Quite simply the most remarkable collection of poems by an Irish poet in a year which gave us important new collections by such as Heaney, Muldoon and Kinsella.’
— Terence Brown, Poetry Ireland Review
‘This is Ciaran Carson’s second collection of poems. His first, The New Estate (1976), revealed an intricate, lyrical poet intensely aware of traditional Irish cultures, and concerned to connect them meaningfully with the sprawl of modern living; these early poems are taut, rather literary, and often very beautiful. His themes are pretty much the same in his equally impressive new book, but his approach to them has changed radically. All the poems in The Irish for No are written in long easygoing lines – more or less fourteeners – and exhibit a wonderful fidelity to the casual flow of ordinary speech and storytelling’. — Mark Ford, London Review of Books
‘The longer pieces . . . are virtuoso feats of controlled association . . . the short poems are, as much for their exactness and composure as for their undertow of loss and fright, indispensable.’ — Alan Jenkins, The Observer
‘Ciaran Carson is a superb storyteller in verse, comparable with R S Thomas, Robert Frost or Patrick Kavanagh . . . This is a marvellous book: calm, sad, incisive, and, at times, very funny.’ — The Sunday Tribune
