Ciaran Carson was a Northern Irish poet who grew up during the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants, leading to the separation of Northern Ireland from Britain. The poem, Belfast Confetti, was published under his collection The Irish for No (1987).
The poem is a political comment on Northern Ireland bloody fight to gaining independence from British rule. Specifically, this poem revolves around the 1960’s conflict between the Christians and the Protestant, historically known as ‘The Troubles.’ Catholics believed they were being discriminated against and so the situation escalated to violence and terror. Eventually, with the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland was able to gain independence, thus ending the period of violence.
Carson was born in Northern Ireland and was witness to the fraught tensions between the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the British. Carson went on to win the Irish Times' Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for the poem, and his anthology collection won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize.
