As recently as a decade ago, Paul Durcan's poetry was still, regarded as rather outre and even shocking, but today he is apparently as fashionable as Temple Bar. Full of pop idioms and topicality, a mixture of sophistication and boyishness, wide ranging in its references, flirting with the surreal and the absurd, tuneful and often quasi improvisatory, his verse has hit the mood of the times as accurately as Roddy Doyle or U2. This is a book of tributes by various hands - Toibin himself, Fintan O'Toole, Eamon Grennan, Peggy O'Brien, Edna Longley, Ruth Padel, Bruce Woodcock, Brian Lynch, Brian Kennedy, Derek Mahon.
Grennan's "Paul Durcan: A Collage" is perhaps the most substantial piece, and Lynch's "A Half open Letter to Paul Durcan" is one of the liveliest. A quality of obvious affection unites these highly disparate contributions.