The Dubliner, born on October 16, 1944, was a poet “ahead of his time”, according to the editor of a new book, 80 At 80, on Durcan’s work.
Niall MacMonagle hailed the lasting significance of Durcan’s output, saying he is extremely happy that Leaving Certificate students around the country are studying and learning about Durcan’s work.
“He wrote a wonderful poem to a very good friend of his called Martha’s Wall, and it’s the poem that tells of his walk down to the Poolbeg Lighthouse,” Mr MacMonagle said.
“He put that walk on the map and it’s just glorious. His description of the sky and the sea and the silence they both enjoy when they sit down beneath the red lighthouse at the end of that long causeway.
“He’s unlike any other poet really. His voice is so distinctive, he has a unique presence in the literary landscape.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get with Paul Durcan. He creates so many different personae.
“He’ll give you a scenario and then pull the rug from under you, and you just don’t know where to go. It’s always interesting, always exciting the way he can take on the zeitgeist and write about Ireland, the world.
A new book, 80 At 80, celebrates the work of the poet Paul Durcan. Pic: Kyran O’Brien
“He’s got a prodigious talent and in over 20 books, he really has given me the soundtrack of my life. I’ve known him and I’ve been reading him for over 40 years.
“I think it’s just so liberating having his work on the Leaving Cert curriculum. His work is so fresh, so dynamic.
“The poems on the Leaving Cert, there’s a very long moving poem about being homeless when his marriage broke down. Then you’ve got the poem about the five nuns being burned to death.
“You’ve got the wonderful poem celebrating the birth of his first granddaughter, Rosie Joyce. Then there’s The Wife Who Smashed The Television Screen Gets Jail and The Man With A Bit Of Jizz In Him, he’s terrific for titles even.
“Father’s Day is another wonderful poem that was on the Leaving Cert, it begins in a madness.
“The scenario of the man going down to Cork with the axe and by the end of the poem, it’s for meditation on his two daughters, and how they grow up, and how he speaks of how he feels alone.”
Over the years, Durcan’s poetry has been shared worldwide, giving everyone a glimpse of Dublin and Ireland.
“He has a huge following, he has read in Australia, Latin America, Russia, New Zealand, America, all over Europe and all over Ireland,” Mr MacMonagle said.
“The way he wrote about the church, the way he wrote about the divorce referendum, the election of Mary Robinson, the Northern Troubles and then he’d look at something like the death of the nuns in a convent fire on St Stephen’s Green.
“If you think about poems like I’ve got the Premier League Blues, Kilfenora Tea Boy, or Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin. These poems are part of life in Ireland.
“His poem, Cardinal Dies of Heart Attack in Dublin Brothel, is an outrageous type that makes you rethink everything.
“He also talks about growing up, being born in Dartmouth Square. His father was a Circuit Court judge. He was a very strong authority figure. It was Sheila MacBride, his mother, that really nurtured Paul as a poet.
“There’s a wonderful poem called the MacBride Dynasty, where they’re out in Clonskeagh, when Durcan is a little boy and he’s taken out to see Maude Gone, his grand aunt.
“She’s 80 years old, she’s in the bed and it’s so vivid. It’s about watching this woman. Maude Gone is iconic, Yeats’ great love.
“We get a description of Maude, she ‘leaned forward, sticking out her clothes to embrace me, her lizards of eyes darting about in the rubble of the ruins of her beautiful face’.
“That’s very different from the take we get in Yeats’ love poetry,” he added.
An event to celebrate Paul Durcan’s 80th birthday, and the publication of 80 At 80, will be held at the Gate Theatre on October 21.
The gathering of live readers, produced by Poetry Ireland and the Gate Theatre’s Gatecrashes series in association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, will delve into some of his best loved poems.
