Ciaran Carson's Books: A Bibliographic Mapping of Belfast

The irish word "'cló' is a stamp, type, print, impression … 'an cló,' the printing press," writes Ciaran Carson in his memoir The Star Factory (1998):

'cló' is also the act of conquering, subjugation, destruction, defeat; variety, change. So, depending on context, 'bun na gcló' can mean the origin of species, the establishment of stamps, the bottom line, a fount of images, an authority of peers, the arbiter of fashion, Commander of the Echelons, a bank of type, a metronome, the basics of taxonomy, the founder of a dynasty or sect, monotype …, a veritable Tower of Babel; in other words, a jungle.¹

A quick glance over Carson's list, which I have only partially reproduced here, reveals the etymological connections between printing and the processes of conquest and domination, both cultural and militaristic. Colonization undoubtedly leaves its stamp or imprint on the history of a region; but Carson's list also suggests how the complex social interactions that make up print culture have much to do with power hierarchies, often imperial ones. In the context of Ireland the philatelic images adhered to envelopes, the activities of printing presses, and the circulation of printed materials such as newspapers, journals, and books bear the visual signs of the British empire. Printing and bookmaking carry knowledge about the power hierarchies of empire even as they harbor revolutionary potential. In his explorations of the urban space of Belfast, Carson draws extensively on his conception of cló as he maps the city through the world of books and the photographic, poetic, and narrative histories they contain. He remains alert to the implications of colonization and cultural dominance that are embedded within the material features of texts.

As a preface to part one of Belfast Confetti, Ciaran Carson quotes a passage from Walter Benjamin's A Berlin Childhood around the Turn of the Century:

Not to find one's way about in a city is of little interest. … But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires practice. … I learned this art late in life: it fulfilled the dreams whose first traces were the labyrinths on the blotters of my exercise books.²

As a way of understanding and existing in a city, Benjamin's meditation on losing one's way resists the orderly representations of travel books, maps, and street signs. Instead the writer finds an alternative way of viewing and representing urban landscapes. This topographical exercise is not without direction, however. In his essay, "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting," Benjamin uses a discussion of book acquisition to suggest alternative strategies for mapping the city.

I have made my most memorable purchases on trips, as a transient. Property and possession belong to the tactical sphere. Collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!³

For Benjamin the joy of the city is not merely getting lost within it, but finding one's own tactical way of understanding it, both tactile and strategic. To possess a city is to own a certain knowledge of its material existence—its books and bookstores or the everyday items that populate urban space. Such material objects hold knowledge of the city and how its social relations are constructed.

Just as the urge for collecting shapes Benjamin's own vision of a city, books offer a way of organizing the city in Ciaran Carson's poetry. In Carson's Belfast Confetti (1989) the poet ignores the main thoroughfares and landmarks of Belfast. Instead he introduces the reader to the side streets and dead ends of a city subject to the detailed scrutiny of international news outlets and governmental agencies that created knowledge about the geography of violence during the Troubles. To get lost in Carson's fragmented and dynamic Belfast is not to be without...