The Laughter of Mothers - Softcover
An outstanding collection of very personal poems by one of Ireland's foremost poets.
'Thank you, O golden mother, For giving me a life,' says Paul Durcan in this brilliant new collection, a poignant tribute to 'the first woman I ever knew'. Sheila MacBride came from a political family -- her uncle John MacBride was executed in 1916 for his part in the Easter Uprising -- but when Sheila married into the 'black, red-roaring, fighting Durcans of Mayo' she was obliged to give up a promising legal career. These poems commemorate his mother as Paul Durcan remembers her playing golf, reading Tolstoy, and initiating him in the magic of the cinema. He recalls her compassion and loyalty when he was committed to a mental hospital in adolescence and how she endured the ordeal of her old age.
Durcan also muses upon the beauty of Greek women and questions our need for newspapers and the new religion of golf. He is beguiled by a beggar woman, enraged by a young man picking his nose on the Dublin-Sligo commuter train, and gets into difficulty at the security gate of Dublin airport.
'Thank you, O golden mother, For giving me a life,' says Paul Durcan in this brilliant new collection, a poignant tribute to 'the first woman I ever knew'. Sheila MacBride came from a political family -- her uncle John MacBride was executed in 1916 for his part in the Easter Uprising -- but when Sheila married into the 'black, red-roaring, fighting Durcans of Mayo' she was obliged to give up a promising legal career. These poems commemorate his mother as Paul Durcan remembers her playing golf, reading Tolstoy, and initiating him in the magic of the cinema. He recalls her compassion and loyalty when he was committed to a mental hospital in adolescence and how she endured the ordeal of her old age.
Durcan also muses upon the beauty of Greek women and questions our need for newspapers and the new religion of golf. He is beguiled by a beggar woman, enraged by a young man picking his nose on the Dublin-Sligo commuter train, and gets into difficulty at the security gate of Dublin airport.
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About the Author:
PAUL DURCAN was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, Endsville, has been followed by twenty-two others, including The Berlin Wall Café, Daddy, Daddy (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), Crazy About Women, A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems, Give Me Your Hand, Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil, The Laughter of Mothers, Life is a Dream: 40 Years Reading Poems 1967-2007, and Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being. He was conferred with a DLitt by Trinity College Dublin in 2009 and by University College Dublin in 2011.
Review:
· "Paul Durcan's Ireland is the one we inhabit. At times he is ready to celebrate the bizarre and the ordinary; at other times he is full of a surreal rage against both order and disorder." --Colm Toibin, Times Literary Supplement
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- PublisherHarvill Secker
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1846557534
- ISBN 13 9781846557538
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages144
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The Laughter of Mothers [Soft Cover ]
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(2012)
ISBN 10: 1846557534
ISBN 13: 9781846557538
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The Laughter of Mothers
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ISBN 10: 1846557534
ISBN 13: 9781846557538
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Book Description Condition: New. Dieser Artikel ist ein Print on Demand Artikel und wird nach Ihrer Bestellung fuer Sie gedruckt. Thank you, O golden mother, / For giving me a life, says Paul Durcan in this brilliant new collection, a poignant tribute to the first woman I ever knew .Über den AutorrnrnPaul Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, En. Seller Inventory # 597078527
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