Poetry review: Paul Durcan at his poetic crescendo

  80 at 80 contains 80 poems to mark Paul Durcan’s 80th birthday.

Works are selected from across the poet’s career, beginning with ‘Nessa’ (from the 1975 collection O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor) and culminating in two poems from 2016’s Wild, Wild Eerie.

By any measure, the release of such a volume is an unusual event. More than a book of poems, this is a declaration, an invitation to celebrate and, perhaps, to judge a life’s work. 

For those familiar with his poetry, 80 at 80 is a way to enjoy his most representative work in one volume.

For others, it’s a more than serviceable introduction to the poet.

Reading these poems, it’s striking how little Durcan has changed over the years. From day one, his work has been more than usually accessible to even a casual reader. 

The book’s first poem, ‘Neasa’, introduces us to his theme immediately — love, in this case: “I met her on the first of August…She was a whirlpool…I very nearly drowned.” 

The poem’s final verse starts with a plea: “Neasa my dear,/Will you stay with me…” 

This is a thread we can follow across the decades of Durcan’s poetry — the woman who doesn’t stay or can’t stand it anymore. 

Later, in the poem ‘Windfall, 8 Parnell Hill, Cork’, he reflects on a broken marriage and states with refreshing bluntness “with good reason/I was put out of my home…”.

Durcan has always come across as an artist determined to never sound poetic or to use language that might push readers away. 

When he feels a poem going in that direction, he checks himself. Sometimes this is just what the poem needs.

‘Six Nuns Die in Convent Inferno’ is a tragedy described through a deceased nun’s ghostly voice, where the changes in tone emphasise both the sisters’ sincere love of Christ and their relatable humanity.

The poem reaches a poetic crescendo as the women find themselves trapped, beyond hope of rescue: “Burning to death in the arms of Christ … Beating our wings in vain” before switching immediately to a memory of a trip to the beach in Ardmore, when they were “scampering hither and tither in our starched bathing costumes”.

On other occasions, this switching of tone comes at the price of sabotaging some fine poems.

In ‘Cardinal Dies of Heart Attack in Dublin Brothel’, the poem appears ready to fully realise itself when the speaker lights “three candles:/One for the Cardinal, one for the lady…one for the Unknown Soldier in all of us”, before the air is let out of the experience as we are given unnecessary detail in prose: “The sitting position is my natural position.”

Several of the works here rebel against social norms of the time. In ‘Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin’, he asks “what de Valera would have thought/Inside his ivory tower/If he knew that we were in his green, green grass/Making love”.

Poems like this may have been genuinely transgressive and humorous at the time but, at a distance of several decades and stripped of shock value, they lose some effect.

Durcan is at his best when he leaves all those considerations behind.

‘Hymn to my Father’, a touching reflection on his relationship with his late father with echoes of Plath, is elegant and simple: “Dear Daddy…Can you hear me…Chained to your footwarmer and your pills”.

Without question, Durcan has helped to change our perception of what a poem ought to be. He’s a poet who makes it his business to chip away at the edifice of his own craft.

He’s fated to divide opinion for years to come.