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Paul Durcan. 5 th Year Poetry. Paul durcan : Biography. Paul durcan : Biography.
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Paul Durcan 5th Year Poetry
Paul durcan: Biography The hostility of Durcan’s father reached its peak when at the age of 19, after a breakdown of relations with his family, Durcan was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital by his family. Against his will he was committed to St John of Gods in Dublin and later a hospital in London. Over the course of nearly three years Durcan was needlessly exposed to dozens of ECT sessions. He has described his fear that the doctors would perform a lobotomy on him, as they did on many other patients.
Paul durcan: Biography Durcan maintains that he did not suffer from mental illness as his family alleged. However he says he has suffered from depression and insomnia ever since the ECT treatments. He said "Here were these authoritarian, cocky middle-aged men telling me they knew everything about me. "They could inject electricity and gas into you so as to make you conform." In 1965 Durcan fled hospital and made his way to London where he became friendly with the poet Patrick Kavanagh. Kavanagh became a surrogate father for Durcan and he saw him almost every day.
Paul durcan: Biography His first collection of poetry Endsville, which he co-authored with Brian Lynch, was published in 1967. Soon after, Durcan met Nessa O’Neill at a wedding Kavanagh had invited him to. They were later married and had two daughters before returning to Ireland in 1970. Durcan went back to education, studying archaeology and medieval history at UCC after reportedly being informed by the English department he did not understand English or poetry and “had no future in it”. Durcan describes this as “one of the most traumatic moments” of his life.
Paul durcan: Biography He carried on writing, despite the lack of encouragement, and received first class honours in his degree as well as the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1974. In 1984 Durcan and Nessa decided to end their marriage after sixteen years. This painful and traumatic event is captured in his poetry as his response to his father’s death in 1988. Durcan’s poetry deals with themes of love, marriage, family and Ireland and its history.
Wife Who smashed television gets jail • This poem is unusual in that it takes the form of a newspaper report. The poem reports how the woman’s husband testified against her, telling the judge how “She came home, my Lord, and smashed in the television”. • Midway through an episode of Kojak, his wife returned from the pub and “marched” angrily into the living room. • She seems enraged by the fact that families spend all their time watching television rather than engaging in conversation.
Wife Who smashed television gets jail • He refuses to turn it off and she makes good on her threat, using her boots as a hammer to smash the appliance. “I didn’t turn it off, so instead she turned it off”. • Television sets, she suggests, have infiltrated family life and now play the role of parents and spouses: “I didn’t get married to a television”. In her opinion, the family would be better spending their time in the pub as it is at least a place of human interaction.
Wife Who smashed television gets jail • The report switches from reporting the husband’s testimony to describing the reaction of the presiding judge. He suggests televisions should be considered members of the families who own them: “the television itself could be said to be a basic unit of the family”. • The judge deems that any wife who shows a preference to the pub rather than watching television is a “threat to the family”. He sentences her to an unspecified time in jail with no chance for an appeal.
THEME: fAMILY • This poem highlights the negative impact of technology can have on family life. The wife laments how the family sit stupefied in front of the screen while the old traditions of eating together, talking, sharing news and opinions are all gone. • TV is portrayed as an insidious addiction – the husband’s response to his wife’s attack on the TV is to rush off elsewhere so he and his kids don’t miss a moment of Kojak. Though they have differing opinions on TV sets, both the wife and the judge make clear that televisions have become part of the family. • The poem, then, presents a conflict between human interaction on one hand and machine interaction on the other. This is especially clear when the wife declares she’d rather have her children in the pub than in front of the television. Pubs may be considered inappropriate for children but she feels at least there people engage with each other.
THEME: marriage • Durcan’s poetry often presents a gritty and realistic view of marriage. However the relationship presented in this poem is likely the most dysfunctional of all. • The wife comes to feel so ignored and marginalised that she’s provoked into the violent attack on the television set. • This surely is marital breakdown in the extreme. Then to make matters even worse, the husband appears to report the wife’s action to the police, testifies against her in court and effectively gets her locked up.
THEME: the strength and power of women • Durcan’s poetry is full of strong and impressive women. Yet among these women, the woman who smashed the television stands out. • This is a woman not afraid to rebel. She has been ignored in favour of the television for long enough. She has watched the television destroy family life across the country for long enough. She responds with her own small but unforgettable act of rebellion. • It’s unsurprising then that she is compared with Queen Maeve, who in Irish legend was the fierce and powerful ruler of Connaught, and the equal of any king.
THEME: Ireland and irish history • This poem presents Ireland as an oppressive place – especially towards women. The role of women is to maintain the stability of the family unit, and thereby the stability of society itself. • In such an environment women must function as loyal and obedient wives who look after the household and their husbands needs. Any women who rebel against this role, like the wife in the poem, will be regarded as a social menace and dealt with severely by the authorities. • Tellingly, there is no mention in the report of the wife’s testimony. Perhaps the judge felt her husband was the only one worth listening to and was happy to convict on his evidence alone. Or perhaps she was invited to speak but the reporter felt her words were not worth sharing. Either way, her silencing reflects the marginalised status of women in Ireland at that time. • The bias against women is also suggested when the husband describes how Kojak shoots a woman who happens to share his wife’s name: “After shooting a dame with the same name as my wife”. We’re left with the impression that this is a world where women are controlled and oppressed.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Form: • The poem’s most notable feature is its presentation as a newspaper report. The title is written in the style of a newspaper headline, while the body of the poem mixes quotes and reportage just as a real court report would. • The husband’s testimony is quoted verbatim, while in the last six lines Durcan skilfully captures the clipped, neutral style of the court reporter.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Tone: • Durcan brilliantly captures the tone of the husband’s speech as he gives his testimony. There is something very realistic about the way he moves from a casual style of conversation (“me and the kids”, “my mother’s place”, “my mother has a fondness”) to a more formal one (“peaceably”, “my Lord”, “whereupon”). • We are left with a vivid impression of a man used to speaking in a casual manner who throws in a few big words to try to impress the judge and win his favour.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Language: • It’s important to look at the words used by the husband to describe his wife’s behaviour. • He frames her outburst in emotionally charged language, designed to make her actions seem violent and unreasonable and uses words like “marched”, “smashed”, “declared”, “disappeared”.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Humour: • This poem is rich in the surreal humour the flavours much of Durcan’s poetry . We see this in the wife’s attack on the television and the husband’s equally bizarre response as he rushes his kids to his mother’s place to catch the end of Kojak. • We also see it in the judge’s overreaction as he imprisons the wife for breaking what is, after all, her own appliance. • Durcan uses this bizarre scenario to make a serious point, attacking both the destructive influence of television and the oppression of women in the Ireland of the day. Although the poem is very quirky, it is also a powerful piece of social criticism.
Personal response This poem was written at a time when televisions were the only form of electronic entertainment. Yet its message is even more relevant today in our world of smart phones, laptops and games consoles. We now have so many different screens to get lost in – so many different ways to ignore each other.
QUESTIONS • The wife feels it is better for a family to drink in the pub together than watch television together. Why do you think she believes this? Do you feel that she has a point? • Given that this poem was written in the 1970’s is it still relevant to the Ireland of today? Give a reason for your answer. • Write a personal response to this poem. (Use SMILES to help structure your answer)
Parents • Durcan compares sleep to an ocean. When we fall asleep we slip beneath the surface and “drown” in its depths. • He depicts (image) parents looking down on their child who is lost in the swirling reaches of unconsciousness: “A child’s face is a drowned face” • The ocean of sleep separates or “estranges” those who slumber from those who are awake.
Parents • Sleepers stay on one side of the ocean’s surface, waking people on the other. The surface of this ocean, then, is like a barrier separating the parents from their child: they are “Estranged from her by a sea”. Durcan reinforces this point by repeating it almost exactly in line 16 and 17. • The parents long to connect with their child but the impassable barrier of deep sleep prevents them from doing so. Durcan uses a wonderful simile to describe this comparing the parents to people who have been “locked out of their own home”.
Parents • Sleep is also compared to a pane of glass separating the parents from their child in the metaphor: “Their big ears are fins behind glass”. • But it is a twisted or distorted pane that makes the parents ears resemble huge fish-like fins. It seems to suggest that even if the sleeping child could somehow sense what was happening around her it would seem bizarre, distorted and incomprehensible. • This is a strange but powerful image that reinforces our sense of the great divide between the waking and the sleeping worlds.
Parents • We sense however that this is no ordinary sleep, that this particular child may be very ill. After all, the parents seem highly anxious and concerned about their child, staying up all night to watch over them: “And through the night, stranded, they stare” • Their foreheads are “furrowed” with lines of worry. Durcan’s choice of language highlights the parents’ fear and suspense. Their clenched and puckered foreheads are compared to the mouths of fish: “Pursed-up orifices of fearful fish”
Parents • We sense also that the child may be experiencing some kind of fever that brings vivid, unpleasant and chaotic dreams. Even though she is unconscious she knows something is wrong. • In her dreams she longs to connect with her parents: “And in her sleep she is calling out to them / Father, Father / Mother, Mother”. But of course her parents can’t hear what she shouts in her dreams. • If she woke she would see her parents standing over her but she is lost in her fevered sleep and cannot do so. The repetition of the word “drowned” in the poem’s last line reinforces our sense that the child is sick: “At the drowned, drowned face of their child”.
Theme: family • The poem highlights how far away our loved ones seem while they are sleeping. Sleep is likened to a barrier or pane of glass that leaves us “locked out” or “stranded”. • When our loved ones sleep beside us we experience a strange kind of loneliness because they are lost in another world where we cannot reach them. • Durcan is a poet who presents an honest and rounded view of family life, celebrating the joys of family life but also its difficulties. This poem seems to deal with the agonies of having a sick child, highlighting the stress and worry experienced by parents in that awful situation. We sense the tension as they stay up all night watching over their child, their foreheads “furrowed” with worry.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Metaphor and Simile: • This poem uses an extended metaphor that compares sleep to an ocean. Sleepers slide into this ocean and “drown” within its depths while waking people remain “stranded” above its surface. The ocean’s surface is presented as an unreachable barrier between sleep and waking. • Other metaphors are used to describe the parents’ faces as they watch their sleeping child. Their ears are compared to fins. And in a bizarre comparison their clenched brows are likened to the mouths of fish. • A fine simile is used to describe the distance between the waking parents and the sleeping child, with the parents compared to people locked out of their home.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Language: • Durcan choice of language illustrate the worry and stress the parents are experiencing. Words such as “estranged”, “furrowed”, “pursed-up” and “stranded” highlight the feeling of isolation and anxiety they are feeling.
questions • What does the poem suggest about what it is like to be a parent? Refer to the poem in your answer. • The poem features a number of similes and metaphors. Describe three and say which one found most effective.
Sport: background • In this poem the poet addresses his father, with whom he had a very difficult relationship. • As Durcan himself describes it: “When I was ten, he began to be somewhat problematic. When I think about it there were gratuitous beatings and he was incredibly severe about things like examinations. If I hadn’t got second or third place it was bad news, and sometimes he would take the strap off his trousers and beat me. A man has to be so very complicated if he takes a school report for a ten-year-old that seriously.”
Sport: background • Durcan’s father was a high-ranking judge, and in the poet’s account emerges as nearly a stereotype of that profession – stern, severe and uncompromising. A man to whom discipline was everything. • He could make no sense of his son’s sensitive personality and artistic tendencies. To him these seemed like signs of mental disorder or insanity. • Over the poet’s teenage years the relationship between father and son became increasingly tense and then broke down completely. Finally, when Durcan was nineteen, his father had him committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Sport • ‘Sport’ recalls a memory from this difficult period spent inside institutions. As he turned twenty-one, the poet was being held in Grangegorman Mental Hospital: “I was a patient / In B Wing”. • He’s selected to play in goal for the hospital’s Gaelic-football team in a match against Mullingar Mental Hospital – both teams it seems are made up of inmates rather than of staff members. • The poet provides a vivid portrait of the opposing team. He emphasises the great size and bizarre appearance of the Mullingar players, describing them as “big country men” who had “gapped teeth, red faces / Oily, frizzy hair, bushy eyebrows”.
Sport • The poet stresses the enormity of the Mullingar full-forward line, which was “over six foot tall / Fifteen stone in weight”. The three full-forwards were all schizophrenics, while the centre half-forward was rumoured to be an alcoholic solicitor locked up for castrating his best friend. • Yet the poet held his nerve and bravely defended his goal against the intimidatingly crazy Mullingar attack: “To my surprise / I did not flinch in the goals” He plays far better than he expected, “leaping high” and “diving full stretch” to deny the Mullingar team.
Sport • The poet credits his impressive display to the fact that his father was present at the game. So keen was he to “observe” his son’s performance that he drive all the way from Dublin to Mullingar. • The poet was determined not to disappoint his watching father: “I was fearful I would let down / Not only my team but you”. In fact, he wanted to captivate or “mesmerise”him with the quality of his performance. • His father’s presence gave him the “will to die”, the motivation to ignore pain, risk and potential injury that are “essential” to all sportsmen and artists, according the poet.
Sport • The poet suggests that both artists and sportspeople share a particular mentality. According to the poet, both require a “will to die”, a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. • Athletes train long after they have passed through the pain barrier, throw themselves heedlessly into tackles and keep fighting long after their bodies start aching. • The artist also needs to take risks but they are with their mental health rather than physically. The artist must expose themselves to mental suffering, probe the darkest corners of their minds, explore all kinds of painful memories and memories in the creation of art.
THEME: family • This may seem like a funny and light-hearted poem but it provides a moving portrait of a complicated father-son relationship. • The father comes across not as loving and supportive but as severe, critical and judgemental. He seems to have a low opinion of his son and is dismissive of his talents and abilities: “There were not many fields / In which you had hopes for me”. • The use of the word “observe” in the first stanza indicates the father’s cold and critical manner.
THEME: family • The poem also highlights the personality clash between father and son. The young poet was a sensitive, talented and artistic individual. But to his father they meant nothing. The father regarded his son’s only success as playing on a “winning team” for Grangegorman Mental Hospital: “In your eyes I had achieved something at last” • The poet would go on to be come a famous and successful poet (a feat remarkably difficult to achieve) but these achievements would mean little compared to his performance in goal on his twenty-first birthday: “Seldom if ever again in your eyes / Was I to rise these heights”
THEME: family • This is a highly dysfunctional family relationship. However, we also sense that some affection or love exists between the two. • The father turns up to support his son, travelling fifty miles to watch an obscure football match between two mental institutions. At the end of the game he seems to take genuine pride in his son’s performance: “Sniffing your approval, you shook hands with me. / Well played, son” • Perhaps he felt that at last his son was doing something he could understand, something manly and physical.
THEME: family • The poet’s twenty-first birthday should have been an occasion of family celebration, yet it turns out to be a grim parody of togetherness, the father shaking hands with the son he’s had incarcerated. • However, the poet too displays a kind of affection towards the father who had him locked up. He is desperate to impress or “mesmerise” him, and terrified of letting him down. • We are left then with the agonising sense of what might have been, that this father-son pair could, under different circumstances, have had a healthy and happy relationship.
THEME: family • We sense the poet’s anger at being locked up, at being misunderstood, dismissed and disregarded by his father. • There is perhaps also a sense of anger at his younger self for trying so hard to impress the man who had him incarcerated. • Yet there is a real sense of sorrow here, as if the poet acknowledges the residual love that continues to exist between them even after he had been committed. We sense him lamenting his father’s own mental and emotional issues, and the terrible impact they had on their relationship.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Tone: • In this poem we get a real sense of the young poet’s state of mind and personality. We sense his vulnerability as he stands between the goalposts but also his hope and determination to impress his watching father.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Imagery: • Like much of Durcan’s poetry ‘Sport’ features imagery that is memorable strange and surreal. In particular the depiction of the Mullingar players with their “gapped teeth” and “bushy eyebrows”, of their centre half-forward who was rumoured to be an alcoholic solicitor locked up for castrating his best friend
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Humour: • This poem is filled with the zany humour for which Durcan’s poetry is so often celebrated: the bizarre set-up of the match between two mental hospitals, the almost cartoonish depiction of the Mullingar team, the farcical final scoreline: “Having defeated Mullingar Mental Hospital / By 14 goals and 38 points to 3 goals and 10 points”. There is also the fact that one of the players allegedly castrated his best friend but “meant well” in doing so.
Nessa • The poet remembers how he first met Nessa O’Neill, the woman who would become his wife. The couple were introduced at a wedding in the Shangri-La Hotel in Dublin. • Because they are by the sea in summertime, they decide to leave the wedding and go to the sea: “I hopped into the Irish sea”. On their way back to the hotel they lie down together in a field. He describes how he could have happily lain beside her in the field for the rest of his life: “I’d have lain with her in the grass all my life / With Nessa” • The poet is clearly immediately smitten with Nessa; he feels intoxicated, out of control, overcome by emotion. He uses a wonderful metaphor to capture these sensations describing how Nessa “took me by the index finger / And dropped me in her well”
Nessa • As well as the sexual connotations present, these lines powerfully suggest his sense of being out of control, of falling helplessly towards something new and unknown. This is reinforced by the refrain that is repeated in some form at the end of each stanza: “And that was a whirlpool, that was a whirlpool, / And I very nearly drowned.” The intensity of his emotions are almost too much, he feels as is he is drowning in them. • Nessa is portrayed as an energetic, carefree and spontaneous young woman. She seems confident and self-assured as she takes the lead in her budding relationship with the poet: “She took me by the index finger”.
Nessa • The final stanza clearly takes place sometime after the memorable first meeting, shifting from the past to the present tense. The poet and Nessa are still together. • However, now the poet’s feelings are fraught with uncertainty, dread and desperation. Perhaps their relationship has entered a rocky period, or perhaps the poet feels as if Nessa is about to leave him. Or perhaps he simply feels insecure – aware of how vulnerable loves makes us, of the devastation he’ll feel if Nessa ever chooses to leave him.
Nessa • The poet uses images from their first meeting to describe his current dark state of mind. He describes himself on the rocks of Dalkey, where he and Nessa went swimming on that first day. This hard and desolate shoreline serves as a powerful metaphor for his bleak mental state. • He pleads with Nessa to relieve the feelings of dread and uncertainty that grip him regarding their relationship. He asks her to “stay with [him] on the rocks”, to promise herself to him and relieve his fear and insecurity. • He asks her to “come for [him] into the Irish Sea” as if he longs for her to rescue him from the waves of dread and doubt that threaten to overwhelm his mind.
THEME: romantic love • In some respects ‘Nessa’ highlights the heady excitement that marks the beginning of a new relationship. We sense the energy and passion of this first meeting, the exhilaration that fills them as they begin to fall in love. • Yet the poem also deals with what might be described as love’s darker side. The poet might feel excitement on this first meeting but he feels like his life is spinning dangerously out of control. He compares this feeling to that of falling down a well or being sucked into a whirlpool. The poet is keenly aware that falling in love leaves us exposed and vulnerable.
THEME: romantic love • This is especially evident in the last stanza where the poet seems gripped with fear and uncertainty about the status of his relationship with Nessa. We get the sense that he fears for the relationship’s future and worries whether Nessa loves him with the same intensity. • The images of the poet on the rocks, drowning in the Irish Sea and riding in the dust-wrapped taxi all convey his misery as he struggles with the feelings of doubt and insecurity that threaten to overwhelm him.
THEME: the strength and power of women • Durcan’s poetry contains many portraits of strong women. Nessa, his former wife, certainly falls into that category. She takes the lead in the new relationship and leads him on an intense romantic journey. Again and again she takes the initiative, suggesting that they go for a swim and lying beside him in the field. • She comes across as the more self-assured, confident and assertive of the two. This vivacious, spontaneous young woman is portrayed almost as a force of nature – a whirlpool whose powerful energy threatens to overwhelm the poet.
Style: Language, tone, techniques etc. • Tone: • We get a sense of the poet’s personality and character. He seems far less self-assured than Nessa and is led by her. He’s reluctant to enter the water, suggesting he’s less carefree than his new love. In the end he is unable to resist her or her invitation into the sea.
