{"title":"Books by Paul Durcan","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781787304840","title":"80 at 80","description":"An Irish Times Bestseller: a new selection of Paul Durcan's finest poems.   'He has written immortal poems. I revere him' Michael LongleyFor fifty years the poet Paul Durcan has explored and questioned a world both real and imagined.   Steeped in the goings-on of Ireland and preoccupied with its concerns, he has delighted, enriched and unsettled his readers. His prodigious output of more than twenty collections bursts with poems that are courageously personal and passionately spiritual – a body of work that contains multitudes.   ‘The great enemy of art is the ego’ says Durcan. ‘It keeps getting in the way. One needs the ego to disappear so that I become you; I become the people walking up and down the street.’First published in 1967, Durcan remains the most of companionable of poets. His vivacity and ability to surprise has never been clearer than in this new selection of eighty of his finest poems, published in celebration of his 80th birthday.   EDITED BY NIALL MACMONAGLEWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY COLM TOIBIN","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44582956499122,"sku":"9781787304840","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787304840_453438d5-c12f-47c2-8ae4-eb04ae3d8d8c.jpg?v=1786025680"},{"product_id":"9781910701126","title":"Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil","description":"WINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePaul Durcan has been at the heart of Irish cultural life for 30 years and his poetry has acquired a huge international following. \u003ci\u003eGreetings to Our Friends in Brazil\u003c\/i\u003e is his most challenging and engaging collection yet, one that addresses itself through Ireland and the Irish diaspora to the whole world beyond.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308501184885,"sku":"9781910701126","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781910701126_df8932f4-c594-431a-94dc-705406abc6bb.jpg?v=1786028986"},{"product_id":"9781910701133","title":"Cries of an Irish Caveman","description":"WINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCries of an Irish Caveman\u003c\/i\u003e 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 and loss, life and death. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd finally, in some of his most daring and original writing, Durcan describes his own twentieth-century romance, replete with ecstacies and inevitable agonies, beauty and hope, but also brutality and self-abasement.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56313133662581,"sku":"9781910701133","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781910701133_66bc5846-9c09-4a9e-b774-22baec326c79.jpg?v=1786028987"},{"product_id":"o-westport-in-the-light-of-asia-minor","title":"O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor","description":"WINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eO Westport in the Light of Asia Minor \u003c\/i\u003ewas 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, \u003ci\u003eEndsville \u003c\/i\u003e(1967), with Brian Lynch.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492217725301,"sku":"9781910701102","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781910701102.jpg?v=1786529046"},{"product_id":"the-berlin-wall-cafe","title":"The Berlin Wall Cafe","description":"WINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was the collection with which Durcan broke through to the huge and appreciative audience he enjoys today. In the first part are poems of great satirical comedy and also of great passion and indignation, and in the second part, poems about the break-up of a marriage so intense they would hurt if they weren't also possessed of the healing gifts of truthfulness and humour. In \u003ci\u003eThe Berlin Wall Café \u003c\/i\u003eDurcan has located that space between the walls and barriers societies and individuals erect - a no-man's-land of the free imagination where we meet as the vulnerable and comical human beings we are. It contains some of his very best work.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492218478965,"sku":"9781910701119","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781910701119.jpg?v=1786529047"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-paul-durcan.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}