Belfast Confetti — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Belfast Confetti
The poems
What you need to know
A man caught in a riot in Belfast during the Troubles is hit by a blast and a hail of metal, and finds himself trapped in streets he knows well, unable to finish a sentence or answer questions about who he is.
How Carson's extended metaphor of punctuation and print, long lines broken by short, clipped phrases, and closing questions show violence breaking up language, thought and identity.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'it was raining / exclamation marks', 'A fount of broken type', 'an asterisk on the map', 'This hyphenated line', 'blocked with stops and colons', 'I know this labyrinth so well', 'Every move is punctuated', 'A fusillade of question-marks'.
Form: two stanzas of very long lines broken up by short, clipped phrases, an extended metaphor of punctuation and printing type, and a closing run of questions.
Context: Ciaran Carson (1948–2019), born in Belfast into an Irish-speaking family, whose collection The Irish for No (1987) has a section called Belfast Confetti, the title of his next collection (1990); the Troubles (late 1960s to 1998), the conflict between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland, with riots, bombings and British troops on the streets; and street names such as Balaclava, Raglan and Inkerman that recall the Crimean War.
Compares well with: Exposure (confusion and waiting under fire), War Photographer (civilians caught up in violence), The Charge of the Light Brigade (the Crimean War behind Belfast's street names) and What Were They Like? (language failing in the face of violence).
