ARTS Paul Durcan to read in Achill

WORDSMITH?Poet Paul Durcan.

Paul Durcan to read in Achill


Paul Durcan will read from his most recent publications, ‘Life Is A Dream 40 Years Reading Poems 1967 – 2007’ snd ‘Praise In Which I Live And Move And Have My Being’, at Gielty’s Clew Bay Bar & Restaurant, Dooagh, Achill tonight (Tuesday), June 10, at 8pm. The free reading,  presented as part of the Penn State Ireland Summer Abroad Programme 2014, is open to all, and no advance booking is necessary.
Regarded by many as the great poet of contemporary Ireland, Durcan poetry has recently contemplated the fall of the Celtic Tiger, while railing against bankers and ‘bonus boys’. There are poems of love lost and won, and poems in memory of friends and relatives who have passed on, but there is also joy to be found in the birth of a grandson, and there is praise, too, for the modest heroism of truckers, air traffic controllers and nurses, those ‘slim, sturdy, buxom nourishers’ of fallen mankind.
Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, ‘Endsville’ (1967), has been followed by more than 20 others, including ‘The Berlin Wall Café’ (a Poetry Book Society Choice in 1985), ‘Daddy, Daddy’ (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), ‘A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems’ (1993), ‘Cries of an Irish Caveman: New Poems’ (2001), ‘The Art of Life’ (2004) and ‘The Laughter of Mothers’ (2008).
In 2001, Durcan received a Cholmondeley Award. He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry 2004-2007. In 2009 he was conferred with an honorary degree by Trinity College, Dublin. He is a member of AosdΡna.