Paul Durcan and the Death of the Parent in Daddy, Daddy and The Laughter of Mothers

Abstract

Chapter 4 offers a dramatically alternative reading of the lyric subject’s relationships with the mother and father figures respectively in the popular work of the former Ireland Professor of Poetry Paul Durcan. The focus of this chapter is two of Durcan’s most popular collections, both of which deal with the deaths of the subject’s parents, Daddy, Daddy (1990) and The Laughter of Mothers (2007), published soon after the deaths of Durcan’s father and mother respectively. This chapter contends that while Durcan’s texts often provide evidence to support conventional Oedipal interpretations, close readings also reveal the extent to which Durcan simultaneously underlines the connections between the subject and the father and the divisions between the subject and the flawed mother.