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Irish Independent
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Paul Durcan, popular, prolific, performing poet who had the power to move people with his words
Prolific, popular and a performing poet, he had the power to move people with his words. A sensitive soul who took the daring leap to devote his life to poetry, he was a rare breed. He also had a great gift for making people laugh. One of his poems began with the line: 'My father was a man with five penises.' His poetry chronicled Irish life and his own life. The two were intertwined. His great friend Niall MacMonagle described his work as 'the soundtrack to our lives'. Indeed it was. Durcan's finger was relentlessly on the pulse of the nation. He would peruse the newspapers and broadcast media, then spin them into poetic gold. Such was the power of his writing that his verses often had more potency than any news report. 'That's one of the things about people who write poetry, you record things that you would have forgotten about, that I would have forgotten about,' he once said. He wrote about the poor Loreto nuns who burned to death in a tragic accident (Six Nuns Die in Convent Inferno). When a man drowned trying to cross the River Slane at a Bob Dylan concert, he commemorated it in verse. He wrote about the divorce referendum and his rage as a priest from the pulpit urged a vote against it, in accordance with the church's teachings. When the IRA killed two RUC policemen, his poem The Bloomsday Murders, 16th June 1997 was placed on the front page of The Sunday Independent. 'Not even you, Gerry Adams, deserve to be murdered, You whose friends at noon murdered my two young men, David Johnston and John Graham.' ADVERTISEMENT Learn more He also had a great ability to look at the world from an oblique angle. His poems would go off on surreal tangents, like the one about the old ladies who escaped from a nursing home, giggling in their golden dressing gowns. Another one imagined his elderly mother installing a trapeze in her kitchen. He was a master at making people laugh. He captured the minutiae of Irish life. He wrote of a priest in the middle of a 'fast mass', asking his congregation to pray that Clare would beat Galway in the All-Ireland hurling quarter-final. When he wasn't writing, he spent a lot of time doing poetry readings. Although he has a poem about one lone man being his audience, this was not the norm. They were almost always booked out, and with good reason. To say that he recited his poetry would be an understatement. He performed. His readings were mesmeric. He would close his eyes, wait for silence and then freefall into an odyssey of his beautifully bizarre world. Complete with accents, facial expressions and fantastic timing, he would have the audience in howls of laughter. He would bask in this joy with his gentle smile. Other times when his criticism of IRA atrocities, in verse, was met with stony silence, he would carry on courageously. Having heard him, it was impossible to read his poems without his voice in your head. But equally, they were strong enough to stand alone. Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944 to Sheila MacBride and John Durcan. His mother's family name was a huge part of his childhood because her father's younger brother was John MacBride who was executed in 1916. Her first cousin was Seán MacBride, the son of John MacBride and Maud Gonne. His father was a Mayo man. John Durcan was a secondary school teacher who went on to become a barrister and later a judge. He wrote about them both in his poetry. He had precious childhood memories of getting the 11 bus with his mother with her pearl earrings, matching necklace and glistening lipstick, on the way to see Treasure Island in the cinema. He said that she was his first childhood sweetheart. His relationship with his father was often troubled. It is all in the poetry, especially in the book Daddy, Daddy. Paul wrote of asking if they could pass out the moon as they drove in his father's Ford Anglia to Mayo. His father would quiz him on whether his bowels had moved or not and tell him that he would leave him his galoshes. As a young boy, when he didn't excel academically in the top three in the class, his father beat him. Years later, a doctor persuaded Mr Durcan his son should be institutionalised. When he was 19, Paul was put into a psychiatric hospital where he had to undergo 27 sessions of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatment. Alan Gilsenan covered this period in his documentary about Paul's life The Dark School. But ever after, he was reluctant to talk about that time. It was the distant past. 'I ended up in St John of Gods in a ridiculous way. There was nothing the matter with me. I'm sure you saw the film One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Well, I was one of the luckier ones, one of the ones who flew over the cuckoo's nest and survived it,' he said. 'I didn't get a leucotomy which would have finished me off completely but I did get massive amounts of barbiturates, the whole Mandrax and every lethal tablet you could ever name. I think I came out of it with a kind of melancholia.' As the years passed, he became softer about his father. 'I wrote what I wrote,' he said of his poems about him, 'but I realise that some people have formed too black an impression of him. He took his job as a judge unbelievably seriously and it definitely made him more melancholic. It took its toll on him. "But he was a terrific storyteller and he was forever telling me about the French Revolution. It fascinated him and so Robespierre and Danton were real to me.' He got a degree in archaeology and medieval history. Paul married Nessa O'Neill in 1968. She changed his life. They lived in London for some time and had two daughters Sarah and Síabhra. They finally settled in Cork. He wrote of the wondrous joy of their love and family life. When their marriage broke down in 1984, he wrote about it in verse. The heartache was heartbreaking to read. The Difficulty that is Marriage is one of his poems on the Leaving Cert syllabus. He poured his life into his work. Poetry was his life and his life was in his poetry. In one poem he wrote: 'Do not buy the biography of Primo Levi. If you want to know Primo Levi, read the poetry of Primo Levi. The poetry is the story; The story is the life.' And so it was with him. It is all there. He wrote of love, loneliness, how he was crazy about women and how his hair was grey with woman hunger. He wrote about two recovering alcoholics spending Christmas Day together. He wrote about how he was not a natural driver and had spent endless Sunday afternoons driving around, practising so he would pass his test. He wrote of how appalled he was that his bedroom had a matching squalor to the artist Tracey Emin's grubby exhibit, with his sheets the colour of stagnant dishwater. Last October, the Gate Theatre hosted a night to celebrate the publication of Paul Durcan — 80 at 80. It was his final book, a compilation of his poetry edited by Niall MacMonagle. His poems were recited by many including President Michael D Higgins. But Paul was not there. He was no longer able. His life had changed and he was in a nursing home.
RTÉ News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Funeral mass for Paul Durcan taking place in Dublin
The funeral mass is taking place in Dublin of one of Ireland's most renowned contemporary poets Paul Durcan, who died last week aged 80. A winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize and the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, his publications include A Snail in My Prime, Crazy About Women, Greetings to our Friends in Brazil, and Cries of an Irish Caveman. President Michael D Higgins and his wife, Sabina, are among those who are attending requiem mass, which is being being celebrated at St Patrick's Church, Ringsend. Mr Durcan was a gifted communicator, who was celebrated for his role as a much-loved public voice, breaking barriers with his singular writing and reading style. He developed a prominent career over the decades, publishing over 20 books. Mr Durcan will be missed by Nessa, his daughters Sarah and Síabhra, his son Michael, his sons-in-law, daughter-in-law, and his nine grandchildren. Funeral prayers will be held at St Mary's Church in Westport, Co Mayo tomorrow at 11am, followed by burial in Aughavale Cemetery.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Paul Durcan, Irish poet who examined the Troubles and gave intense public readings
Paul Durcan, who has died aged 80, was a prolific and popular poet whose work was often marked by a reaction against authority and intolerance, which he found both in his relationship with his father and in his native Ireland. Although his poetry reveals a profound love of both, he could be unsparing of his targets, which he could attack with scathing satire as well as affection. A poem from Daddy, Daddy (1990), a collection that won the Whitbread Poetry Award, has both at once, as Durcan recalls 'the battle' to persuade his father to buy him a copy of Joyce's Ulysses when he was a teenager. John Durcan, the senior circuit court judge of County Mayo, declared (in the poem 'Ulysses', at least): 'I'll not be party to subsidising that blackguard / Bringing works of blasphemy into this house.' Other poems respond in a direct, personal way to acts of terror and to the intransigence of the church. Durcan found himself enthralled by a sermon in 1986, but recoiled when it ended with a plea to vote against divorce in the forthcoming referendum. His own marriage had recently broken down, which led him to reflect: 'I have come into this temple today to pray / And be healed by, and joined with, the Spirit of Life, / Not to be invaded by ideology.' Of self-styled liberators, he was directly damning. One poem, 'In Memory of Those Murdered in the Dublin Massacre, May 1974,' endsy evoking 'An explosion of petals, of aeons, and the waitresses too, flying breasts and limbs, / For a free Ireland.' He commemorated the victims of the 1998 Omagh bombing by reciting their names, then their ages, then their home towns, and concluding with a line addressed to the killers, 'I cannot forgive you.' He would broadcast these words later, aiming them straight at Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein. But it was his confessional tone as much as his declamatory commentary on the Troubles that made him public property. He could use the rhythms of poems to pace his pieces as if they were short stories, some of which are outlandish fantasies, but others intimate, real and vivid. His work appeared in rapid bursts – rather than emotion recollected in tranquillity, they can seem like notes on unfolding situations – and what his collections may at times lack in editing and polish, they gain in immediacy. In this he owed perhaps as much to Allen Ginsberg's hectoring use of repetition as he did to the refrains of Irish poems and melodies. It made his readings, during which he could appear to be meditating or delving into memory, especially intense. Paul Durcan was born in Dublin on October 16 1944, the son of Justice John Durcan and his wife Sheila. Through his mother he was descended both from Maud Gonne, the muse of WB Yeats, and from John MacBride, who was executed for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916. Although Durcan would remember his father as an engaging raconteur, he would also recall being beaten from the age of 10 if he came lower than third in exams. He began to study Law and Economics at University College, Dublin, but this effort to please his father was outweighed by Durcan's growing interest in poetry. The rift between them reached a crisis point when Durcan was 19 and a doctor persuaded his father that he should be institutionalised. The family achieved this by ambushing Durcan in a pub on Merrion Street: two relatives entered, and a third caught him as he tried to escape by the back door. Taken home, he was given the first of many injections, and then sent to Harley Street. For the next three years, he was in and out of mental hospitals. He endured 27 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy, and later considered himself lucky to have been spared a lobotomy. In 1966, he settled in London, where he worked for the Gas Board. He met his future wife, Nessa O'Neill, at the wedding of the poet Patrick Kavanagh; the two poets had become friends after Kavanagh wrote an enthusiastic review of Durcan's first published work, Endsville (1967, co-written with Brian Lynch). Durcan remembered finding in Kavanagh a merry wit on which few others had commented. Durcan and Nessa O'Neill married in 1968. They settled in Cork in 1970, with their two daughters; Durcan resumed his studies, and gained a first-class degree in Archaeology and Medieval History. Nessa became a teacher in a prison in Cork, and Paul contributed a column to the Cork Examiner. The marriage broke down in 1984. He was soon in demand internationally as a performer; trips to Russia and Brazil were particularly fruitful, not least because he could assess Ireland's relative place in the world. In the shadow of a statue of Stalin, he comments, 'We Irish have had our bellyful of blat / And blarney, more than our share / Of the nomenklatura of Church and Party…' His outrage at authoritarian figures led him to praise strong women, and not only his mother, wife and daughters. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Mary Robinson's campaign to become President of Ireland, and wrote poems praising her. Unlike the poets of the North, who would often find slanted ways to convey truths about the Troubles, Durcan addressed them with an open-eyed horror. Even when the island was at peace, though, he found aspects of it to ridicule. Poems from the early years of this century skewer the chattering classes, or the financiers who were responsible for the yo-yoing of the country's economy. Later collections mock Dubliners who find it easier to jet to Nice rather than drive to the south coast, or imagine a WB Yeats shopping centre. He would explain in interviews that his traumatic experiences with doctors earlier in life left him with melancholia and depression, and much of his poetry can be seen as an expression of this. But time tempered it: he came to express an awareness of how horrible his ideas could be. His responses to the world remained intimately bound up with his own private world: just as his relationship with his father was rooted in an Ireland in which Durcan found oppression and hypocrisy, he could see how his relationship with his mother, in her last years of dementia, could suggest parallels with an increasingly strange and frightening background. In one poem, he sits with her as they watch news of the planes attacking the World Trade Centre: the poem reproduces the psalms and nursery rhymes that feel like a response that is at once natural and unnatural. For a while, he found paintings a useful stimulus: he produced a volume of poems through which he imagined his way into the paintings of the National Gallery in London, Give Me Your Hand. Previously, he had curated an exhibition of paintings in Dublin, but still found opportunities to mock his commissioners: he has a guard muse about those around him, 'They scamper off for their coleslaw. / Punters scoff a lot of coleslaw in the National Gallery of Ireland.' He is survived by two daughters and a son. Paul Durcan, born October 16 1944, died May 17 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Irish Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
'A great and unique talent': President Higgins leads tributes following death of Irish post Paul Durcan
PRESIDENT Michael D. Higgins has led the tributes to Irish poet Paul Durcan, who has passed away at the age of 80. Author of more than 20 volumes of poetry, he was known for his sharp, satirical voice as well as his outspoken, comic but often moving work. "Ireland has lost the poet with the keenest sense of its absurdity and the lost opportunities for love and feeling," said President Higgins. Durcan was born in Dublin on October 16, 1944 and raised both there and in Co. Mayo. His earliest poems appeared in the collaborative volume Endsville, which was published in 1967, a year after he had relocated to London. He returned to Ireland in the 1970s, studying Archaeology and Medieval History at University College Cork, graduating with first class honours. His first fully-fledged collection, O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor, was published in 1975 and earned him the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. Durcan pictured in 1999 (Image: It was followed by more than 20 further collections, including 1990's Daddy, Daddy, which won that year's Whitbread Book Award for Poetry. That same year, he collaborated with Van Morrison on his album, Enlightenment, co-writing and performing on the track, In the Days Before Rock 'n' Roll. "It is with the greatest sorrow that I have heard of the passing of Paul Durcan, one of Ireland's most important poets, and a close friend for over 50 years," said President Higgins. "Paul Durcan's contribution to the performed poem was of enormous importance to the appreciation of poetry in Ireland. "That we have audiences in so many generations for Irish poetry owes much to him and those others who brought their work around Ireland and abroad." He added: "Sabina and I know him as a dear friend. Early in my presidency he visited us in the Áras. His illness was hard for him to bear and Ireland was missing a great and unique talent in poetry. "His over 20 collections will be a source of great humanity and insight for generations to come." 'Distinctive and authentic voice' Taoiseach Micheál Martin also praised Durcan, describing him as 'one of Ireland's outstanding poets and literary figures'. "Capable of both searing honesty and great wit, Paul's works will continue to be celebrated across generations," he added. "My sympathies go to his wife Nessa, children Sarah, Siabhra and Michael, and his wider family and friends." Tánaiste Simon Harris meanwhile said Durcan was 'unflinchingly honest, witty and one of Ireland's best poetic voices'. "In the quiet spaces of ordinary moments, he found inspiration," added Mr Harris. "His body of work was both accessible and deep and this is shown in his fantastic final selection of 80 of his finest poems, published in celebration of his 80th birthday last year. Durcan receiving his honorary Doctor in Letters degree from TCD in 2009 (Image: James Horan / "With his passing, Ireland has lost one of its most distinctive and authentic voices — and his work, which often turned the mundane into the extraordinary, will live on for generations." Durcan's other notable collections include Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil, The Laughter of Mother, Life Is a Dream, and Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being. In 2001, he received a Cholmondeley Award, which honours distinguished poets from Britain and Ireland. From 2004 to 2007, he was the third holder of the Ireland Professor of Poetry position, set up in 1005 to commemorate Seamus Heaney's Nobel Prize. Durcan was conferred with an honorary Doctor in Letters degree by Trinity College Dublin in 2009 and an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College Dublin in 2011. In 2014, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Irish Book Award.
Extra.ie
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Tributes pour in after death of acclaimed poet Paul Durcan
Tributes have been paid to the acclaimed poet Paul Durcan, who died at the age of 80 yesterday morning. Mr Durcan's family confirmed the news, saying he will be 'sadly missed by (his wife) Nessa, his daughters Sarah and Síabhra, his son Michael, his sons-in-law, Mark and Blaise, his daughter-in-law, Linden and his nine grandchildren'. His daughter Síabhra said her father's passing was 'very sudden' but added 'he had been unwell in recent years, so he had spent the last several years in a nursing home in Dublin'. She said that the funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date. Tributes have been paid to the acclaimed poet Paul Durcan, who died at the age of 80 yesterday morning. Pic: James Horan/ Mr Durcan turned 80 years old on October 16, 2024. A collection of his work, 80 at 80, was released to mark the occasion. The book featured an introduction from writer Colm Tóibín, who said of the acclaimed poet: 'It is hard to think of another poet in these islands who has written such searing poems against violence and cruelty and the politics of hate. 'It is also difficult to think of another male poet who has written such brave works of self-examination.' Mr Durcan turned 80 years old on October 16, 2024. A collection of his work, 80 at 80, was released to mark the occasion. Pic: Laura Hutton/ Mr Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944 and grew up in the Co. Mayo village of Turlough. He began his poetry career 60 years ago, publishing his first book, Endsville, with colleague Brian Lynch. There followed more than 20 books, including The Berlin Wall Café (1985), Daddy, Daddy (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being (2012), and The Days of Surprise (2015). He was Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2007, and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement at the Irish Book Awards in 2014.
