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Paul Durcan
Overview
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Themes
Love
Marriage
Family
Childhood
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Said About Durcan…
‘Poetry can often seem remote and removed from the real world but the beauty about Durcan’s poetry is that it is of this world and, in particular, very much of Ireland.’ - Ciara Dwyer in the Irish Independent 18th October 2009
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StyleFree verse - follows the rhythm of natural speech
Couplet
Sonnet
Lyric
Simple/ accessible
Sense of place
Colloquial
Narrative
Dramatic
Surreal
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Said by Durcan
So much of it is free verse, yes, but I feel it’s every bit as strict a form as the sonnet. There is only one right word. You must find that word. The other part is music. All art aspires to the condition of music, so what you hear must sound right.’
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ToneSelf-deprecating
Humorous
Satirical
Honest
Nostalgic
Filled with longing
Loving
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Said by Durcan ‘I have been asked many times over the years, especially by people who genuinely do not like what I write: Why is it that you present prose as poetry? In my defence, I say that I have spent most of my life trying to write poetry, I have given it a lot of thought through the years, and I am preoccupied with metric structure, as I’m sure anyone who writes poetry is. Everything I’ve ever published in verse has had to obey rules of metre; if somebody doesn’t hear that, the I wonder did I get it right.’
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What might you be asked?Simple language - deep insights
Accessible, appealing - asks questions, thought-provoking
Humour and sadness
Unusual approach to relatively common dilemmas
Blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary
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The Difficulty that is Marriage
Theme - love and the complexity of marriage
Title hints all is not well even though poem is filled with reflections on love
Sonnet - normally associated with love but this one has neither rhyme nor rhythm, hinting again that all is not running smoothly
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Wife Who Smashed Television Gets Jail
Theme - Family life falling apart / social commentary
Written like a newspaper report; dramatic; black humour
Inversion of societal norms: wife is in the pub etc.
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Parents
Love of parents for child
Feeling of helplessness, distance
Unusual metaphors
Image of sea is also used in ‘Windfall’
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En Famille
Childhood
Hints at darkness are unsettling
Nostalgic but realistic
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WindfallLongs for home
Sorrow at what he has lost
Familiar images
Outside versus inside
Acceptance of his own role in bringing about the end of his marriage
Heart-breaking
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Sport
Family
Mental illness
Black humour
Sorrow
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Father’s Day, 21st June 1992
End of a relationship
Distance and loss
Image of destruction - axe
Sadness
Black humour