Orpheus Ascending The Berlin Wall Café by Paul Durcan

Authors

"Orpheus Ascending The Berlin Wall Café by Paul Durcan", by Derek Mahon. The Irish Review, 1986 Published with the kind permission of Gallery Press.

Derek Mahon

Derek Mahon was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a poet and translator who explored contemporary themes through verse with classical formal structure. Mahon studied at Trinity College Dublin and at the Sorbonne in Paris, and he taught in England and the United States. Mahon also lived in London, where he adapted literary texts for British television and worked as a poetry editor, reviewer, and theatre critic. He contributed to the Irish Times and published his first collection, Twelve Poems, in 1965. Other collections include Night-Crossing (1968), The Snow Party (1975), The Hunt by Night (1982), Harbour Lights (2005), Life on Earth (2008), and New Selected Poems (2016). Mahon passed away on 2 October 2020.