Belfast Confetti is a poem about the aftermath of a sectarian riot in Belfast by Northern Irish poet and translator Ciarán Carson. GCSE Poetry < Edexcel Conflict Belfast Confetti Extract from The Prelude No Problem Exposure The Class Game War Photographer (Satyamurti) What Were They Like? This conflict took place when the minority population of Catholics was dominated, discriminated against, and also harassed by the Protestant majority. In the first line, “exclamation marks” means the screaming voices of people, who were being ruthlessly killed during the riot.

Belfast Confetti (poem) - Wikipedia

The narrator’s inability to ‘complete a sentence in [his] head’ is a metaphor for the chaos and irrationality of the riot and the disorientating effect this is having on his composure. Carson has used the first-person narrative style to describe his feelings in the most efficient way. Every single scene has been presented and depicted just the way it must have happened, way back then. Ciaran Carson is a poet and novelist who was born in Northern Ireland and has always had a deep passion for politics. This means you will have an unannotated copy of the poems and you will be asked to compare two poems from your chosen anthology.

Belfast Confetti’by Ciaran Carson describes a speaker watching the live scene after the riot between the shipyard workers, who were the Protestants, and the Catholics. Even though he wishes to leave and even though he knows that he has survived, he is unable to get rid of his helplessness about being unable to help those who lost their lives in the riot. IwaswonderingifIcouldgetawaywithstudyingafewpoemsindepth,thatmoreorlesscancomparetoanyotherpoem,suchasHalfcaste,TheClassGameorExposureandafewmore. He lived through what came to be known as the Troubles close The Troubles The time of unrest and violence in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998. This poem is about the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants, known as The Troubles, when in the 1960’s the Catholic community claimed they were being discriminated against by the Protestants.

Ciaran Carson – Belfast Confetti | Genius

The poem derives its name from the large ship constructing rivets as well as all the other metals, which were used by the Protestants for the violent attacks against the Catholics. It was framed by a civil rights march in Londonderry on 5 October 1968 and the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998. This has the effect of strengthening the reader’s connection with the narrator and making his thoughts seem more pivotal.By reading this poem, one can easily understand the pain that the scene and the riot must have caused to the poet. Around the 1970’s the IRA (Irish Republican Army) failed to retrieve independence from British rule. He was bestowed with the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize for “The Irish For No” (1987) and has also won the Irish Times’ Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for ‘Belfast Confetti’. Carson uses “stops and colons” to refer to how all the ways of the city were blocked during the “Troubles”.

Belfast Confetti - Belfast Confetti - CCEA - GCSE English

In 1969 he narrowly missed death when a bullet tore through a taxi he was sitting in on the Falls Road. He has has a degree in English literature from Delhi University, and Mass Communication from Bhartiya Vidhya Bhavan, Delhi, as well as holding a law degree.

Carson describes how the external tension and conflict influence his mind, making him restless and tense. He is not only a poet but also an amazing novelist, who is cherished by almost all those who love literature. Look again at this poem, and at one other poem from the Identity anthology which also deals with the theme of identity as story.