Obituary: Paul Durcan, poet (1944 - 2025)

He was born in Dublin and studied Archaeology and Medieval History at University College Cork. His debut collection, O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor (Anna Livia Press), won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1975, and announced immediately a major new and permanent register in Irish verse. Subsequently, Teresa’s Bar (Gallery, 1976), Sam’s Cross (Profile, 1978), Ark of the North (Raven Arts, 1982), Jesus, Break his Fall (Raven Arts, 1983), The Berlin Wall Café (Blackstaff), a Poetry Book Society Choice in 1985, and Going Home to Russia (Blackstaff, 1987), confirmed a poet whose idiom and style spoke to the world of down-to-earth experience, of gravity and levitation – satire and hilarity also, breaking through to a popular readership of which most writers can only dream. Daddy, Daddy (Blackstaff, 1990) won the major Whitbread Poetry Prize (until 2022 the Costa Poetry Prize).

But even the bravura of the writing in these volumes couldn’t prepare the public for the phenomenon of Durcan reading live – an experience once witnessed never forgotten. The intensity of his interpretations of his own words drew many thousands to sensational readings across Britain and Ireland in the 1990s especially.

In an artform of often meagre outputs, Durcan was a poet of lavish gifts, his career blessed with what the American poet Robert Frost called “the wonder of unexpected supply”. Crazy About Women (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991) and Give Me Your Hand (Macmillan, 1994) focused on inspiration from the visual arts. Christmas Day (Harvill, 1996), Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil (Harvill, 1999), Cries of an Irish Caveman (Harvill, 2001), The Art of Life (Harvill, 2004) The Laughter of Mothers (Harvill, 2007), Life is a Dream: 40 Years Writing Poems 1967-2007 (Random House, 2009), and Praise In Which I Live And Move And Have My Being (Harvill Secker, 2012), The Days of Surprise (Harvill Secker, 2015) and Wild, Wild Erie: Poems Inspired by Paintings and Sculpture in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (Toledo Museum of Art, 2016).

His first selected poems was edited by Edna Longley and published by Blackstaff Press in 1982, three of his major collections appeared from that publisher in the 1980s and 1990s. His recording with Van Morrison of ‘The Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll’, which he co-wrote, on the 1990 album Enlightenment, represented a flamboyant highlight of a great career.

He was a member of Aosdána and, in 2004, became the third occupant of the Ireland Chair of Poetry (2004-2007).

Roisín McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, said: “Paul Durcan’s work resonated with whole generations in these islands, with themes reaching from the hardships and joys of personal experiences to the big topics of world affairs and political violence. Through it all was mischief, anarchy and laughter. His work engaged directly with Northern Ireland, a place he felt affinity with. He will be much missed.”