Paul Durcan

Dublin-born, Mayo-rooted, and for decades the most beloved public poet in Ireland. As a young man he was forcibly committed by his family — who disapproved of his wish to write — and subjected to electroshock treatment over three years, an experience that never left the work. More than twenty collections, from O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor (1975) to 80 at 80 (2024). He wrote against clerical power, domestic violence, homelessness and the violence of the Troubles with a mixture of surrealism, black comedy, rage and startling tenderness, and his readings were performances of a kind nobody else gave. Ireland Professor of Poetry 2004–2007; on the Leaving Certificate syllabus, which made him a poet ordinary readers actually knew. Died aged 80 of cardiomyopathy at a nursing home in Dublin.