Book description
Famous for his electrifying poetry readings, Paul Durcan marks four
decades of composing silently and reciting aloud with this magnificent
collection, which brings together for the first time the critically
acclaimed poet's own choice of his work from his first book,
Endsville (1967), to The Laughter of Mothers (2007).
Life is a Dream represents the whole range of Durcan's
writing - funny and subversive verse narratives and self-mocking poems
of underachievement; poems celebrating love and sex or the lives of
famous writers and artists; as well as tender, poignant verses
commemorating the dead.
Throughout his long career, Durcan has continued to make passionate
and moving poetry out of his own and his country's misfortunes. He is
by turns a surrealist, a mystic, an Irish comedian with perfect comic
timing and an angry champion of the oppressed. Life is a Dream
reaffirms the constant vision and artistic integrity of one of the
most powerful, humane and original voices in modern poetry.
Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book,
Endsville
(1967) has been followed by twenty-one 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),
Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil
(1999),
The Art of Life
(2004) and
The Laughter of Mothers
(2007). In 2001 Paul Durcan received a Cholmondeley Award. He was
Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2007. He is a member of
Aosdána.
