Padraic Fallon

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 prolificall – 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.