Description
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor was 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, Endsville (1967), with Brian Lynch.
Trade ReviewPaul Durcan... is one of the country's leading living poets... His strange, mesmerising voice wraps itself around every syllable and texture of his poems, wrapping the audience into its very spell, into the very grain of the text -- Michael Cunningham * Irish Times *
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 *
This is the real thing. One can't say more, or less than that -- David Wright * Cyphers *
