A Poet's Journal and Other Writings

Padraic Fallon

ISBN 10: 184351074X / ISBN 13: 9781843510741

Published by The Lilliput Press Ltd, IE, 2005

About this Item

A powerful and authoritative selection of critical essays and reviews by poet Padraic Fallon. Skilfully compiled and edited by his son Brian Fallon, this book is published to mark the centenary of his father's birth, and testifies to the enduring value of literature in the flux of the twenty-first century. Padraic Fallon (1905 - 1974), one of the foremost Irish poets of his generation and a prolific writer of radio plays, was also an active essay-reviewer in the leading periodicals of his day. His literary criticism was incisive and witty, his erudition lightly worn. Disinterred from old files of The Bell, The Dublin Magazine and The Irish Times, his work remains fresh and readable decades on. Fallon writes authoritatively about the key figures of the Literary Revival: Gregory, Yeats, Stephans, Synge, Shaw and O'Casey - he knew many of them - and also of his contemporaries F.R. Higgins and Austin Clarke, with whom he shared a dedicated engagement with the Irish tradition. He comines frank judgements of Eliot, Pound, Graves, Auden, Gunn, Lowell, Larkin, Kinsella and others with fascinating detours into an East Galway childhood and the folk memories of Antony Raftery. The book is built around a core of previously uncollected work, beginning with the controversial, highly influential 'Poet's Journal' (The Bell, 1951-2) and closing with the wide-ranging 'Verse Chronicles' (Dublin Magazine, 1956-8).

Seller Inventory # LU-9781843510741

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Poet's Journal and Other Writings
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press Ltd, IE
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184351074X
• ISBN 13: 9781843510741
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 1000 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A powerful and authoritative selection of critical essays and reviews by poet Padraic Fallon. Skilfully compiled and edited by his son Brian Fallon, this book is published to mark the centenary of his father’s birth, and testifies to the enduring value of literature in the flux of the twenty-first century. Padraic Fallon (1905 – 1974), one of the foremost Irish poets of his generation and a prolific writer of radio plays, was also an active essay-reviewer in the leading periodicals of his day. His literary criticism was incisive and witty, his erudition lightly worn. Disinterred from old files of The Bell, The Dublin Magazine and The Irish Times, his work remains fresh and readable decades on. Fallon writes authoritatively about the key figures of the Literary Revival: Gregory, Yeats, Stephans, Synge, Shaw and O’Casey – he knew many of them – and also of his contemporaries F.R. Higgins and Austin Clarke, with whom he shared a dedicated engagement with the Irish tradition. He comines frank judgements of Eliot, Pound, Graves, Auden, Gunn, Lowell, Larkin, Kinsella and others with fascinating detours into an East Galway childhood and the folk memories of Antony Raftery. The book is built around a core of previously uncollected work, beginning with the controversial, highly influential ‘Poet’s Journal’ (The Bell, 1951-2) and closing with the wide-ranging ‘Verse Chronicles’ (Dublin Magazine, 1956-8).

About the Author

PADRAIC FALLON (1905-1974) was born in Athenry, County Galway. He worked as a customs official for over forty years, mainly in Wexford. His first work was published by AE (George Russell) in the Irish Statesman. He continued to publish prolifically – poems, stories, and reviews – in many periodicals. But no collection of his poetry appeared until the publication by the Dolmen Press of Poems in the year of his death.

His work was much influenced by writing in the Irish language, which he called in an article in The Bell, a ‘powerful ghost’. Along with Austin Clarke, he was one of the few writers in English to seriously engage with the Gaelic literary tradition in the 1940s and 1950s. His verse plays ‘Diarmuid and Grainne‘ (1950) and ‘The Vision of Mac Conglinne’ (1953) were broadcast on Radio Éireann, and described by Micheál Ó hAodha as the ‘most successful modernizations of old Irish literature’.

His play ‘Sweet Love Till Morn’ was staged by the Abbey Theatre in 1971, while a screenplay ‘The Fenians’ was directed for television by James Plunkett in 1966.

Padraic Fallon died in Aylesford, Kent, and is buried in Kinsale, County Cork. ‘Poems and Versions’, edited by his son Brian, appeared in 1983, featuring many previously uncollected poems as well as translations from the Greek, Latin and French. His ‘Collected Poems’ was finally published by Gallery Press in 1990.