Funeral mass for Paul Durcan taking place in Dublin
A winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize and the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, his publications include A Snail in My Prime, Crazy About Women, Greetings to our Friends in Brazil, and Cries of an Irish Caveman.
President Michael D Higgins and his wife, Sabina, are among those who are attending requiem mass, which is being being celebrated at St Patrick's Church, Ringsend.
Mr Durcan was a gifted communicator, who was celebrated for his role as a much-loved public voice, breaking barriers with his singular writing and reading style.
He developed a prominent career over the decades, publishing over 20 books.
Mr Durcan will be missed by Nessa, his daughters Sarah and Síabhra, his son Michael, his sons-in-law, daughter-in-law, and his nine grandchildren.
Funeral prayers will be held at St Mary's Church in Westport, Co Mayo tomorrow at 11am, followed by burial in Aughavale Cemetery.
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He was a master at making people laugh. He captured the minutiae of Irish life. He wrote of a priest in the middle of a 'fast mass', asking his congregation to pray that Clare would beat Galway in the All-Ireland hurling quarter-final. When he wasn't writing, he spent a lot of time doing poetry readings. Although he has a poem about one lone man being his audience, this was not the norm. They were almost always booked out, and with good reason. To say that he recited his poetry would be an understatement. He performed. His readings were mesmeric. He would close his eyes, wait for silence and then freefall into an odyssey of his beautifully bizarre world. Complete with accents, facial expressions and fantastic timing, he would have the audience in howls of laughter. He would bask in this joy with his gentle smile. Other times when his criticism of IRA atrocities, in verse, was met with stony silence, he would carry on courageously. Having heard him, it was impossible to read his poems without his voice in your head. But equally, they were strong enough to stand alone. Paul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944 to Sheila MacBride and John Durcan. His mother's family name was a huge part of his childhood because her father's younger brother was John MacBride who was executed in 1916. Her first cousin was Seán MacBride, the son of John MacBride and Maud Gonne. His father was a Mayo man. John Durcan was a secondary school teacher who went on to become a barrister and later a judge. He wrote about them both in his poetry. He had precious childhood memories of getting the 11 bus with his mother with her pearl earrings, matching necklace and glistening lipstick, on the way to see Treasure Island in the cinema. He said that she was his first childhood sweetheart. His relationship with his father was often troubled. It is all in the poetry, especially in the book Daddy, Daddy. Paul wrote of asking if they could pass out the moon as they drove in his father's Ford Anglia to Mayo. His father would quiz him on whether his bowels had moved or not and tell him that he would leave him his galoshes. As a young boy, when he didn't excel academically in the top three in the class, his father beat him. Years later, a doctor persuaded Mr Durcan his son should be institutionalised. When he was 19, Paul was put into a psychiatric hospital where he had to undergo 27 sessions of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatment. Alan Gilsenan covered this period in his documentary about Paul's life The Dark School. But ever after, he was reluctant to talk about that time. It was the distant past. 'I ended up in St John of Gods in a ridiculous way. There was nothing the matter with me. I'm sure you saw the film One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Well, I was one of the luckier ones, one of the ones who flew over the cuckoo's nest and survived it,' he said. 'I didn't get a leucotomy which would have finished me off completely but I did get massive amounts of barbiturates, the whole Mandrax and every lethal tablet you could ever name. I think I came out of it with a kind of melancholia.' As the years passed, he became softer about his father. 'I wrote what I wrote,' he said of his poems about him, 'but I realise that some people have formed too black an impression of him. He took his job as a judge unbelievably seriously and it definitely made him more melancholic. It took its toll on him. "But he was a terrific storyteller and he was forever telling me about the French Revolution. It fascinated him and so Robespierre and Danton were real to me.' He got a degree in archaeology and medieval history. Paul married Nessa O'Neill in 1968. She changed his life. They lived in London for some time and had two daughters Sarah and Síabhra. They finally settled in Cork. He wrote of the wondrous joy of their love and family life. 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