President Michael D Higgins has led tributes to acclaimed poet Paul Durcan, who has died at the age of 80.
His family said he would be “sadly missed by (his wife) Nessa, his daughters Sarah and Síabhra, his son Michael, his sons in law, Mark and Blaise, his daughter in law, Linden and his nine grandchildren”.
His death took place on Saturday morning.
His daughter Síabhra said her father’s passing was “very sudden” but “he had been unwell in recent years, so he had spent the last several years in a nursing home in Dublin”.
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She said that funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date.
President Higgins said Durcan was a close friend of his for over 50 years.
“Paul Durcan’s contribution to the performed poem was of enormous importance to the appreciation of poetry in Ireland.
“We have audiences in so many generations for Irish poetry owes much to him and those others who brought their work around Ireland and abroad,” he said.
The President added: “Early in my presidency he visited us in the Áras. His illness was hard for him to bear and Ireland was missing a great and unique talent in poetry.
“His over 20 collections will be a source of great humanity and insight for generations to come. Ireland has lost the poet with the keenest sense of its absurdity and the lost opportunities for love and feeling.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened” at Durcan’s death, calling him “one of Ireland’s outstanding poets and literary figures”.
“Capable of both searing honesty and great wit, Paul’s writing will continue to be celebrated across generations.”
Tánaiste Simon Harris described the poet as “unflinchingly honest, witty and one of Ireland’s best poetic voices”.
“With his passing, Ireland has lost one of its most distinctive and authentic voices - and his work, which often turned the mundane into the extraordinary, will live on for generations.”
Durcan turned 80 on October 16th, 2024. A collection of his work, 80 at 80, was released to mark the occasion. The book was edited by Niall MacMonagle and featured an introduction from writer Colm Tóibín.
In his introduction, Mr Tóibín said that Durcan’s work was “daring, directly personal as well as directly political”.
“It is hard to think of another poet in these islands who has written such searing poems against violence and cruelty and the politics of hate,” Mr Tóibín wrote.
“It is also difficult to think of another male poet who has written such brave works of self-examination.”
Speaking on Saturday, his daughter Sarah said her family is grateful that 80 at 80 was published so recently, as it provides an important overview of her father’s work.
Durcan was was born in Dublin in 1944. He published more than 20 books, including The Berlin Wall Café (1985), Daddy, Daddy (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being (2012), and The Days of Surprise (2015).
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He was Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2007, and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement at the Irish Book Awards in 2014.
He was also a member of Aosdána, an organisation which honours artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland.
A number of his poems have featured on the Leaving Certificate syllabus.
Gerard Smyth, poetry editor of The Irish Times, said: “Paul Durcan’s prodigious body of work amounts to a profound document recording a period of dramatic change in Irish life, his way of seeing like no other poet’s.
“His concerns stretched from the deeply personal to the social and political and also, as Philip Casey once put it, ‘from parochial Ireland to the global village’.
“Very often his poems reflected the news headlines of the day, perhaps succeeding where the headlines failed, in that they shocked us into thinking about darker realities of Irish life.
“He possessed an uncompromising imagination, extraordinary inventiveness – virtuoso gifts that have been evident since his visionary first collection, O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor, a volume that caused much excitement among younger poets back in 1975, one containing poems that lifted Irish poetry into a new realm and served notice that a unique voice and sensibility had joined the chorus of poetic voices.
“The music of humanity can be heard throughout the many collections that followed. His unforgettable readings earned him a devoted following, few poets could spellbind an audience as he did. At those readings he could make us laugh and unsettle us, but behind those flashes of the comic there was too something of a melancholy spirit.”
