Snail In My Prime
  • Published: 30 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446475478
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
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Snail In My Prime

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EBook
30 Jun 2011
Tr. Paperback
1 Aug 2002
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'The present selection serves to confirm his almost iconic place in contemporary Irish poetry' - Derek Mahon, Irish Times

Since the publication of his first book in 1967, Paul Durcan has made satirical, celebratory and extraordinarily moving poetry out of his country's fortunes and misfortunes. His readings are legendary and each new collection, from his collaboration with Brain Lynch, Endsville (1967) to Daddy, Daddy (winner of the 1990 Whitbread Poetry Award), Crazy about Women (1991) and Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil (1999) has borne out the truth of Ezra Pound's dictum that "literature is news that stays news".

This book contains Durcan's own selection from his work. It is a literary milestone that has set the seal on his reputation as a poet of international standing.
  • Published: 30 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446475478
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Paul Durcan

Paul Durcan 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), Crazy About Women (1991), A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems (1993), Give Me Your Hand (1994), Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil (1999), The Art of Life (2004), The Laughter of Mothers (2007), Life is a Dream: 40 Years Reading Poems 1967–2007 (2009), Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being (2012), and The Days of Surprise (2015). In 2001 Paul Durcan received a Cholmondeley Award. He was Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2007. He was conferred with a DLitt by Trinity College Dublin in 2009 and by University College Dublin in 2011. In 2014 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Irish Book Award. He is a member of Aosdána.

portrait photo of Paul Durcan

Also by Paul Durcan

The Days of Surprise
Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being
Life is a Dream
The Laughter of Mothers
The Art Of Life
O Westport In The Light Of Asia Minor
The Berlin Wall Cafe
See all

Praise for Snail In My Prime

Durcan's mastery of tone, his manic confidentiality, his blithe expositions of the seemingly unthinkable, his hypnotic repetitions of what other poets would hardly dare to utter once, all help to give [his work] an air of audacious authority unique in contemporary poetry

Brendan Kennnelly, Irish Times

Durcan's... tall stories, dialogues and choruses, remind us that poetry can have popular reach and embody a genuinely countrywide spirit, without sacrificing integrity

Glyn Maxwell, Independent on Sunday

For him poetry is story-telling and his stories are told in a direct fashion that makes them totally accessible... Paul Durcan's poetry sings

Roger McGough, Sunday Tribune

Like all first-class comedians, he is deadly serious

Terry Eagleton, Stand

Paul Durcan has a great comic gift

Colb Toibin, Sunday Independent

To have heard him adds another pleasure to the reading of the work- but the voice speaks clearly on the page in poems of harrowing intimacy, politics and love. He holds a mirror up to himself: but we can see ourselves over his shoulder, whoever we are

Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian