Peter Fallon: The Voice of Rural Ireland

Peter Fallon brings Ireland to America Thursday February 7 @ 7:30 at the Irish Cultural Centre of New England in Canton, MA where he will read from his collected works. One of Ireland’s most renowned poets, Fallon is currently in residence at Boston College as this year’s Burns Scholar where last semester he taught “Heaney and Friel: Writing Ireland, Writing the World” and this semester will teach a poetry workshop.

At the age of 18, Fallon founded the Gallery Press, located in Loughcrew, Co. Meath. Since its humble beginnings, the Gallery Press has come to be one of the leading publishers of Irish writing and Fallon has become among Ireland’s most respected poets having published over a dozen works. WFUP published his book of selected poems, News of the World in 1993.

 

 

Richard Wilbur writes: “Fallon’s words move artfully within the lexicon of the rural town; their poetry is in the rightness of naming and describing, the exact beat and savor of country speech, the honest tuning of the poet’s feelings toward his chosen place”. 

 

Fallon’s poetry does not just convey a rural Irish tradition, but it transports one to the field, offering a firsthand account that eliminates any barrier between subject and reader. Fallon transports the reader so seamlessly that one forgets he is reading a poem and instead awakens amongst turf, shovel, and lamb. Fallon’s deceptively simple voice is by no means overly sentimental, but rather his blunt and honest speech articulates the emotional breadth of both pleasure and plight in rural Ireland.

 

 

To hear more about Fallon and his upcoming reading, check out this recent article from Irish Community News.
 

Posted by Nicole