An event to celebrate his 80th birthday, and the publication of 80 at 80, we look back on the extraordinary career of one of Ireland’s most lauded and popular poets, Paul Durcan, through readings of his much-loved poems by poets and admirers. For fifty years, he has explored and questioned a world both real and imagined and remains the most of companionable of poets.

To mark his 80th birthday and the publication of Paul Durcan 80 at 80, this very special 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 this considerable collection of some of his best loved poems to give just a flavour of his prodigious output.

Taking place on 21st October at 7.30 p.m. the readings will be introduced by Niall MacMonagle who edited this latest collection. Niall will join friends and admirers who will read a selection of poems, including John O’Donnell, Harry Clifton, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paula Meehan, Catriona Crowe, Theo Dorgan, Alan Gilsenan, Diarmaid Ferriter, Barry McGovern, Jean Byrne and Jarlath Burns. Music – songs and tunes – by Lisa Lambe and Steve Cooney.

Steeped in the goings-on of Ireland and preoccupied with its concerns, he has delighted, enriched and unsettled his readers. Durcan’s output contains beguiling love poems, surreal liberating narratives, quirky memorable utterances and though his poetry is sometimes prompted by headlines – the Northern Troubles, the Divorce Referendum, the death of six nuns in a fire, the election of Mary Robinson, the election of Pope Francis – and sometimes by private concerns, complex relationships, joyous occasions – the breakdown of his marriage, his strained relationship with his father – Durcan’s poetry is always courageously personal and passionately spiritual.

The many voices in Durcan’s work, the many personae, including the persona “Paul Durcan”, add up to a body of work that contains multitudes. Though Paul Durcan says ‘I was never really a poet in the generally accepted term: on the other hand! I was and am fiercely to myself’, Durcan is an eye-sharp, ear-sharp companionable, exciting poet, a poet who rearranges how we see things, as we shall soon hear.

About Paul Durcan

Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, Endsville (1967), has been followed by more than twenty others, including The Berlin Wall Café (a Poetry Book Society Choice in 1985), Daddy, Daddy (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), Crazy About Women (1991), A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems (1993), Give Me Your Hand (1994), Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil (1999), The Art of Life (2004), The Laughter of Mothers (2007), Life is a Dream: 40 Years Reading Poems 1967–2007 (2009), Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being (2012), and The Days of Surprise (2015). In 2001 Paul Durcan received a Cholmondeley Award. He was Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2007. He was conferred with a DLitt by Trinity College Dublin in 2009 and by University College Dublin in 2011. In 2014 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Irish Book Award. He is a member of Aosdána.

Tickets

Tickets are priced €25 excl booking fee.