Paul Painting Paul: Self-Portraiture and Subjectivity in Durcan’s Poetry

Auteurs

  • Kathleen McCracken

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v14i0.3614

Résumé

In a significant number of Paul Durcan’s poems, a ‘character’ named Paul Durcan makes an appearance. Part autobiographical trace, part fictional
construct, what does this enigmatic persona have to say about authorship,
subjectivity and the potential for self-portraiture via poetic form? This article
examines the multiple implications of Durcan’s apparent self-inscription in light of Barthes’s notion of the death of the author, Foucault’s author function, and Durcan’s own perception of the poetry collection as a verbal picture gallery.

Biographie de l'auteur

  • Kathleen McCracken

    Kathleen McCracken is the author of seven collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College (Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1992, A Geography of Souls (Thistledown Press, 2002), Moonclaves (Exile Editions, 2007) and Tattoo Land (Exile Editions, 2009). She has been the recipient of the University of Toronto Review’s Editor’s Choice Award for Poetry (1985) and the Anne Szumigalski Editor’s Prize (2002), and has held several Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Grants. She was runner-up in the National Poetry Contest (1998) and shortlisted for the Canadian Poetry Chapbook Competition (1999). Her poems have been published in The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada Review, Exile Quarterly, Poetry Ireland, New Orleans Review and Grain, and she has given readings in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
    Kathleen is currently Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. She has published scholarly articles on the poetry of Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson, as well as on Irish cinema, the documentary films of John T Davis, and First Nations Canadian writing. A critical monograph entitled Radical Vision: Reading the Poetry of Paul Durcan is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books.

Références

Abbot, H. Porter. Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Auster, Paul. The Art of Hunger: Essays, Prefaces, Interviews and The Red Notebook. London: Faber & Faber, 1997.

Auster, Paul. Invisible. London: Faber & Faber, 2009.

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image Music Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977; rpt. 1990.

Berlin, Isaiah. “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays. Eds. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer. London: Pimlico, 1998.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “Borges and I.” Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. London: Allen Lane/ Penguin, 1998.

Durcan, Paul. Endsville. Dublin: New Writers’ Press, 1967.

______. O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor. Dublin: Anna Livia Books, 1975. Rev. ed. London: The Harvill Press, 1995.

______. The Selected Paul Durcan. Ed. Edna Longley. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1982.

______. Jumping the Train Tracks with Angela. Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1983.

______. Going Home to Russia. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1987.

______. Daddy, Daddy. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1990.

______. A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems. London: The Harvill Press, 1993.

______. Christmas Day. London: Harvill, 1996.

______. Interview with Mike Murphy. The Arts Show. RTE Radio 1, 13 December 1997, 7.02pm.

First broadcast RTE Radio 1, December 1996.

______. Interview with the author. County Meath, Ireland, 19 August 1998. Unpublished.

______. Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil. London: The Harvill Press, 1999.

______. Cries of an Irish Caveman: New Poems. London: The Harvill Press, 2001.

______. The Laughter of Mothers. London: Harvill Secker, 2007.

______. Life is a Dream: 40 Years Reading Poems 1967-2007. London: Harvill Secker, 2009.

Foucault, Michel. “What Is An Author?” The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. London: Penguin, 1991.

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality. New York: Methuen, 1987.

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Publiée

2012-11-17

Numéro

Vol. 14 (2012): ABEI Journal 14

Rubrique

Poetry

Comment citer

McCracken, K. (2012). Paul Painting Paul: Self-Portraiture and Subjectivity in Durcan’s Poetry. ABEI Journal, 14, 105-112. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v14i0.3614