COLIN CARBERRY (Canada/Ireland)

Colin Carberry was born in Toronto, Canada and raised in Longford, Ireland. He has published two collections of poetry, Ceasefire in Purgatory (Luna Publications) and The Green Table (Exile Editions); a chapbook, The Crossing, (Bearing Press); and he has translated two volumes of poetry, Weekly Diary and Poems in Prose & Adam and Eve (Exile Editions), from the Spanish of the great Mexican poet Jaime Sabines. He has read from his work at literary festivals, libraries, bars and universities in Canada, Ireland, and the United States. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Antigonish Review, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, Line by Line: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry, and Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets.

He was hooked, determined (destined?) to translate Sabines, which he has done – capturing all the poet’s complex sensibility – his alert eye, his sensuousness, his mordant humour."
Barry Callaghan (Canada)

"Colin Carberry is widely and rightly regarded as one of Canada's best poets."
Richard Greene (Canada)

“What I like most in Colin Carberry's poetry, and what most impresses me, is the quest, the constant seeking to capture the world in a phrase, the old world in the New, the new world in the Old.”
Jack Harte (Ireland)

"History is the nightmare from which I am struggling to awake”, James Joyce wrote, and the years since he died have been even more nightmarish, especially in his native Ireland. In a later generation Colin Carberry wrestles with similar demons, not only at home in Ireland but in the wide world. His poetry with its dark and bright imagery expresses a vision of that struggle in a distinctive voice, Irish in its eloquent music, yet with echoes of Canada, Mexico, and Rastafari Babylon. The settings may be purgatorial yet they’re redeemed by the energy and order of the verse. The imaginative force is heightened by its containment within metrical verse, including sonnets and terza rima. Redemption, the longed-for ceasefire, is achieved by hope and love. These poems are profound and moving, the real thing, poetry such as we seldom find, both lucid and mysterious."
Kildare Dobbs (Canada)