The Seamus Heaney Centre joins the family and friends of Paul Durcan in mourning his passing.
It was with enormous sadness that we learned of the death at the weekend of Paul Durcan, incomparable poet, incomparable reader of his poems, and from 2004 to 2007 the third Ireland Professor of Poetry. The FA Cup Final was on when the word of his passing came on Saturday afternoon, which brought to mind his conversations with Ciaran Carson in those Professor of Poetry days, in the Director’s Office of the Seamus Heaney Centre - as often about football as about poetry; brought to mind too ‘The Beautiful Game’ in The Art of Life (a quintessentially Paul Durcan title), and the poem that follows it, ‘Sleeping Nude’, with its final line image of every human animal in naked sleep, ‘Born to breathe, fated to rest.’ Rest easy, Paul, with our gratitude, our admiration and our lasting affection.