Book description
O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor
was first published in a tiny edition in Dublin in 1975. It was Paul
Durcan's first fully-fledged collection, and already displays an
astonishingly mature, visionary power, shot through with the surrealism
and heart-breaking comedy that have since become his hallmark. It won
him the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Now Durcan's readers can discover what
they have been missing. The poems are printed in the order he originally
intended, and the volume concluded with six poems from his very first
collaborative collection, Endsville
(1967), with Brian Lynch. Paul Durcan is one of Ireland's foremost
poets. He 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), 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 2009 he published a selection of his work from the previous
forty years in one volume, Life is a Dream
. In 2001 Paul 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 Aosdána.
