In all those senses he was indeed a seer.’ And in this exchange the French precursor has met his match.

It’s long since Ciaran Carson established his reputation as a masterful, protean poet and an adept, inventive translator. His versions of The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, The Táin and The Midnight Court are the yields of thrilling raids on other cultures, times and languages. The Alexandrine Plan (1988) included translations of sonnets by, among others, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).

In the Light Of flourished from his response to an invitation to translate seven of Rimbaud’s prose poems. The originals of these were collected in Illuminations, most of which first appeared in 1886 in the Symbolist review, La Vogue.