Poetry and Satire in Comtemporary Irelandan approach to Paul Durcan's poetry

Resumen

The aim of this paper is to approach Paul Durcan (Dublin, 1944) from a double viewpoint: first of all, to value him as the true heir of the Irish satirical tradition of the present century embodied by James Joyce, Austin Clarke and Patrick Kavanagh. Secondly, to define him as the poet of the "sense of non- place" , the poet of the feeling of dislocation that exists today in Irish society and Irish poetry .Durcan's irreverent and iconoclastic poems depict both institutions and individuals and denounce the violence of the former upon the latter, the Catholic Church being his commmonest target. But at the same time he voices perfectly the world of the dispossesed and the outcast, combining a shocking sense of humour with a great amount of tenderness.