Book description
Cries of an Irish Caveman is Paul Durcan's most inspired and
surprising collection of poems. Through four distinct sections, he
brings his tender lyricism to bear on the themes of love, loss, life
and death.
The first section describes an experience in Australia which
provides a starting point for reassessing his past relationships and
loves. The second returns to Ireland, its people and places, the
celebrated and the unknown. The third section is a meditation on his
daughter's marriage, placing within an historical and sacramental
context a very personal event. And finally, in some of his most daring
and original writing, Durcan describes his own twentieth-century
romance, replete with ecstasies and inevitable agonies, beauty and
hope, but also brutality and self-abasement.
Paul Durcan's first book of poems,
Endsville
(with Brian Lynch) was published in 1967 and has been followed by
fifteen others, including
Daddy, Daddy
(Winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry, 1990) and
A Snail in My
Prime: New and Selected Poems
(1993). His most recent is the long poem,
Christmas Day
(1996). He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Dublin.
