[]
Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being
  • Published: 15 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9781846556272
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being

Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

A major new collection from one of Ireland's leading poets: moving, funny and wise.

Paul Durcan's twenty-second collection finds Monsieur le Poète on the road in Paris, New York City, Chicago, Brisbane, and Achill Island, meditating upon the sanctuary of home and what it means to feel truly at home.

Regarded by many as the great poet of contemporary Ireland, Durcan is on top form here as he contemplates 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. If for Sartre 'hell is other people', for Durcan 'heaven is other people, especially women'.
  • Published: 15 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9781846556272
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Paul Durcan

Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, Endsville (1967), was 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 was a member of Aosdána.

portrait photo of Paul Durcan

Also by Paul Durcan

80 at 80
The Days of Surprise
Life is a Dream
The Laughter of Mothers
The Art Of Life
O Westport In The Light Of Asia Minor
The Berlin Wall Cafe
See all

Praise for Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being

Whatever the subject, venue or city, and no matter how bitter the moment, Durcan has wit, charm and spark. Poetry is his – and our – rescuer... These poems are a pleasure to read

Observer

A poetry of encounter, of sidelong glances and exuberant strangeness. There will be many pleasures here for Durcan fans and aficionados

Paul Perry, Irish Times

Superbly composed, uneasy, desperately witty and often startling… At his best, which he often surpasses in this book, he produces what blue, green and red make when mixed: a pure white light, the noble glow of true praise. In contemporary literature, and not just Irish poetry, Durcan is flying high. Noble may yet become Nobel

Brian Lynch, Irish Independent

One of the few genuinely popular poets of recent decades, a vital presence in Irish culture...entertaining, edgy, and with enough ironic self-awareness to make from such quirky subjects more than superficial reflections on his life and times. Durcan is the recording angel who preserves what could be lost, who brings tidings of change in some of the darker moments of history

Guardian

He is a prolific poet, and as he nears a venerable three-score years and 10, his prodigious output shows no signs of slowing… There will be many pleasures here for Durcan fans and aficionados

Paul Perry, Irish Times

It was mesmerising and spellbinding and deeply affecting each poem received in awed silence

Alan Taylor on Paul’s Edinburgh event, Herald

A book filled with contemporary life, but the poems also have a way of evoking enduring human values, in all their odd tones and surprising textures, as much as the contemporary moment

Colm Tóibín, Guardian Books of the Year

A personal journey through places and people I know

Kathleen MacMahon, Irish Times