Padraic Fallon (1905-1974)

The instructive thing about Collected Poems is the spectacle it affords of a writer gradually and consciously negotiating his way through his influences and managing, with a mild but ineradicable self-confidence, to cultivate his own voice and his own subjects. Fallons’ oeuvre can now be seen to stand in secure and complementary relation to the achievements of Austin Clarke and Patrick Kavanagh.

— Seamus Heaney, from his introduction to Collected Poems

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Padraic Fallon was born in 1905 in Athenry, County Galway, and later moved to Dublin where he became part of the George Russell (AE) circle. For almost twenty-five years he served as a Customs and Excise official in County Wexford where he lived and farmed with his wife and sons.

In the 1950s he wrote many plays for radio. His first book, Poems, appeared in 1974, the year he died. Poems and Versions was published in 1983 (Carcanet/Raven).

Collected Poems was published by The Gallery Press in 1990.

Collected Poems

‘The instructive thing about [Padraic Fallon’s] Collected Poems is the spectacle it affords of a writer gradually and consciously negotiating his way through his influences and managing, with a mild but ineradicable self-confidence, to cultivate his own voice and his own subjects. — Seamus Heaney, from the introduction.