Anne Carson was born in Toronto on June 21, 1950.[1] Her father was a banker and she grew up in a number of small Canadian towns.[2] In high school, a Latin instructor introduced Carson to the world and language of Ancient Greece and tutored her privately.[3] Enrolling atSt. Michael's College at theUniversity of Toronto, she left twice—at the end of her first and second years. Carson, disconcerted by curricular constraints (particularly by a required course onMilton), retired to the world of graphic arts for a short time.[3] She did eventually return to the University of Toronto where she completed herBachelor of Arts in 1974, herMaster of Arts in 1975, and herPh.D. in 1981.[4] She also spent a year studying Greek metrics and Greek textual criticism at theUniversity of St Andrews.[5]
Eros the Bittersweet – Carson's first book of criticism, published in 1986 – examineseros as a simultaneous experience of pleasure and pain best exemplified by "glukupikron", a word of Sappho's creation and the "bittersweet" of the book's title.[7] It considers how triangulations of desire appear in the writings of Sappho,ancient Greek novelists, andPlato.[8] A reworking of her 1981 doctoral thesisOdi et Amo Ergo Sum ("I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am"),[9]Eros the Bittersweet "laid the groundwork for her subsequent publications, […] formulating the ideas on desire that would come to dominate her poetic output",[3] and establishing her "style of patterning her writings after classical Greek literature".[10]
Carson's first book of poetry – 1984'sCanicula di Anna[14] – garnered her first literary prize: theQuarterly Review of Literature Betty Colladay Award.[15][16] Acclaim for her first book of essays,Eros the Bittersweet, grew in the fifteen years after it was published in 1986: the book "first stunned the classics community as a work of Greek scholarship; then it stunned the nonfiction community as an inspired return to the lyrically based essays once produced bySeneca,Montaigne, andEmerson; and then, and only then, deep into the 1990s, reissued as 'literature' and redesigned for an entirely new audience, it finally stunned the poets."[17] By the turn of the millennium,Eros the Bittersweet had also entered into the popular consciousness, voted onto the 1999Modern Library Reader's List for the 100 Best Nonfiction books of the 20th century,[18] and mentioned (along withAutobiography of Red) in a 2004 episode of the television seriesThe L Word.[19]
TheNational Book Critics Circle Award shortlisted Carson three times (forAutobiography of Red in 1998,Men in the Off Hours in 2000, andNox in 2010),[27][28][29] making her andAlice Munro the first two non-Americans to be nominated after the Award went global in 1998.[10][30] She was also shortlisted for theForward Prize in 1998 forGlass and God, her first book of poetry published in the UK.[31] Shortlisted for theT. S. Eliot Prize four times between 1999 and 2013, Carson won forThe Beauty of the Husband in 2001 (her third consecutive nomination),[32] making her the first woman to be awarded this honour.[33] Carson was the first poet to be awarded theGriffin Poetry Prize (forMen in the Off Hours in 2001),[34] and the first to win the prize for a second time (forRed Doc> in 2013).[35][36] She was also a judge for the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize.[37]
Carson has also been the subject of twoedited volumes:Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited byJoshua Marie Wilkinson and published by theUniversity of Michigan Press in 2015, which is dedicated to the breadth of her works;[45] andAnne Carson/ Antiquity (sic), edited by Laura Jansen and published byBloomsbury in 2021, which examines Carson's classicism as it emerges in her poetry, translations, essays, and visual artistry.[46] In 2023,Anne Carson: The Glass Essayist, a critical monograph on Carson's work by Elizabeth Sarah Coles, was published byOxford University Press.[47] The book was awarded the Poetry Foundation's Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism in 2024.
Carson was aRockefeller Scholar-in-Residence at the92nd Street Y (New York City) from August 1986 to August 1987, where she worked on a translation of Sophocles'Electra.[52] It was eventually published in 2001[53] and included in her 2009 bookAn Oresteia,[54] which won thePEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2010.[55] Featuring Aeschylus'Agamemnon, Sophocles'Electra, and Euripides'Orestes,An Oresteia was staged in New York by theClassic Stage Company in 2009.[56]
Carson was also an Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at theAmerican Academy in Berlin in 2007, where she worked on a translation of the ancient Greek playPrometheus Bound (attributed toAeschylus),[57] an excerpt of which was published in 2010.[58]
In 2015, a production of Carson'sAntigone[59] directed byIvo van Hove and starringJuliette Binoche opened at Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg in 2015 before travelling to cities in Europe and the US, including London (Barbican Centre), New York (BAM), and Paris (Théâtre de la Ville).[60]
In the late 1990s, Carson's teaching career hit a hurdle when McGill cancelled all graduate courses in ancient Greek, closed its Classics Department, and moved all remaining Classics courses to its History Department.[3] While continuing to teach at McGill as associate professor, Carson dealt with this by spending half of each year as a guest lecturer at other institutions, including theUniversity of Michigan (Norman Freehling Visiting Professorship, 1999–2000),[64] theUniversity of California, Berkeley (Spring 2000), and theCalifornia College of Arts and Crafts inOakland (Spring 2001).[3] She was appointed John MacNaughton Professor of Classics at McGill in 2000.[65]
Carson moved toAnn Arbor and the University of Michigan in 2003, where she served as Professor of Classical Studies, Comparative Literature, and English Language and Literature until 2009.[66] In 2004, Carson was in contention for theProfessor of Poetry Chair at theUniversity of Oxford, placing second behind the eventual appointmentChristopher Ricks, with around 30 nominations.[67] She was cited as a potential contender for the four-year position again in 2009.[68]
Carson joined theNew York University Creative Writing Program as Distinguished Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor in 2009.[69] Together with her husband and collaborator Robert Currie, she teaches an annual class at NYU on the art of collaboration, called "Egocircus".[70] Carson was an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large atCornell University from 2010 to 2016,[71] and the Mohr Visiting Poet atStanford University (Creative Writing Program) in 2013.[72] She joinedBard College as Visiting Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in 2014, teaching classical studies and the written arts.[73] Carson has described her more diverse role in the latter part of her career as "a visiting [whatever]", and her decades spent teaching ancient Greek as "a total joy".[70]
Carson was elected aRoyal Society of Literature International Writer in 2022.[74] In May 2023, she was announced as Honorary President of theClassical Association, 2023–24.[75] She was awarded the international Vigdís Prize, an award conferred for outstanding contributions to world languages and cultures.[76]
Carson is known to be reticent about her private life, and discourages autobiographical readings of her writings.[77] Information about her in publications is often limited to the phrase: "Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living."[78] While not a confessional poet, her work is considered personal.[8] Carson has said that in her work, she uses her life democratically as just one set of facts among others in the world.[79]
Carson's first marriage, during which she used the surname Giacomelli, lasted eight years and ended in 1980.[3] This union, and its aftermath, has been claimed as a source for "Kinds of Water" (collected inPlainwater), and forThe Beauty of the Husband.[80] Carson has confirmed that her first husband took her notebooks when they divorced (as happens to the protagonist inThe Beauty of the Husband), though later returned them.[81]
Carson's father Robert hadAlzheimer's disease. "The Glass Essay" (collected inGlass, Irony, and God), "Very Narrow" (collected inPlainwater), and "Father's Old Blue Cardigan" (collected inMen in the Off Hours) all deal with his mental and physical decline.
Carson's mother Margaret (1913–1997) died during the writing ofMen in the Off Hours. Carson closed the collection with the prose piece "Appendix to Ordinary Time", using crossed-out phrases from the diaries and manuscripts ofVirginia Woolf to craft an epitaph for her.[3]Red Doc> has been read as a second elegy for the death of her mother.[8] Carson has described her mother as the love of her life.[81][82]
Carson's brother Michael was arrested for drug dealing in 1978. Jumping bail, he fled Canada and she never saw him again.[81] Carson dealt with the disappearance of her brother from her life in "Water Margins: An Essay on Swimming by My Brother" (collected inPlainwater), which is written as a kind of memoir.[77] In 2000, he called her and they arranged to meet in Copenhagen where he lived, but he died before they could reconnect.[83]Nox, an epitaph Carson created for her brother in 2000 and published in 2010, has been described as her most explicitly personal work.[8]
Carson is married to the artist Robert Currie, whom she met inAnn Arbor while teaching at theUniversity of Michigan.[70] She has described Currie as "my collaborator-husband person".[5] Projects they have worked on together include book designs and performances forNox andAntigonick. Carson also refers to Currie as "the Randomizer" during their creative process.[84]
On April 19, 2022, Carson and Currie were granted Icelandic citizenship.[85]
^abcdefghiRae, Ian (27 December 2001)."Anne Carson".The Literary Encyclopedia.Archived from the original on 16 September 2020. Retrieved16 September 2020.
^Carson, Anne (1984). Weiss, Renée;Weiss, Theodore (eds.). "Canicula di Anna".Quarterly Review of Literature. Contemporary Poetry Series 6.25. Princeton:4–39.
^abGlover, Douglas, ed. (1993).The Journey Prize Anthology 6: Short Fiction from the Best of Canada's New Writers. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.ISBN978-0771003141.
^"Antigone". Toneelgroep Amsterdam.Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved15 September 2020.
^Meyer, Paul (2016). "blue for (On Metonymns in Anne Carson)".She] (Ha?) She – TheCanicula di Anna: A Fractal Approach(PDF). Toronto: University of Toronto. p. 163.Archived(PDF) from the original on 31 March 2023. Retrieved26 August 2020.While at Princeton Anne Carson taught (as Instructor and later Assistant Professor) the following courses:The Anti-Augustans: Ovid and the Elegists;Introduction to Augustan Literature;Beginner's Latin Continued: Basic Prose;The Lyric Age of Greece; andGreek Drama in Translation.
^Merkin, Daphne (30 September 2001)."Last Tango".The New York Times.Archived from the original on 11 October 2020. Retrieved8 October 2020.It is always difficult, of course, to gauge how much is autobiographical in a writer's material, and Carson is trickier than most in this regard, but 'Husband' strikes me as being the least cloaked about its origins in lived life.
^abcCarson, Anne; Wachtel, Eleanor (Summer 2012)."An Interview with Anne Carson".Brick: A Literary Journal (89):29–47.Archived from the original on 8 September 2017. Retrieved23 July 2020.
^Carson, Anne (2006). "Lines".Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera. New York: Vintage Books. p. 5.ISBN978-1-4000-7890-5.
^— (2013).Nay Rather. London: Sylph Editions (with the Center for Writers and Translators at the American University of Paris); The Cahiers Series, Number 21.ISBN978-1-90963103-8.
^— (2014).The Albertine Workout. New York: New Directions [Poetry Pamphlet #13].ISBN978-0-8112-2317-1.
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