Peter Fallon was born in Germany in 1951 and grew up on his uncle's farm near Kells in County Meath. He is an Honours Graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where, in 1994, he was Writer in Residence and where he has been Adjunct Professor of English.
At the age of eighteen he founded The Gallery Press which has published more than four hundred books of poems and plays by the country's finest established and emerging authors and which is recognized as Ireland's pre-eminent literary publishing house.
Peter Fallon has given readings all over the US, in Europe, Canada, and Japan. In 1990 he edited, with Derek Mahon, the best-selling anthology The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry. His selected poems, News of the World, was published by Wake Forest University Press in 1993. An expanded edition, News of the World: Selected and New Poems, was published in Ireland in 1998 and was included in The Irish Times 'Books of the Year'.
The Georgics of Virgil, (a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation), and a dramatization of Tarry Flynn, the novel by Patrick Kavanagh, were published in 2004. The Georgics was subsequently published by Oxford in its World's Classics series. His most recent collections are The Company of Horses (2007) and Strong, My Love (2014).
Peter Fallon received the 1993 O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute. He was the inaugural Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University and has been Burns Professor at Boston College. He is a member of Aosdána and Honorary Member of the RHA. He lives in Loughcrew in County Meath where he farmed for many years.
Latest Readings
The Folk Club, Navan
7.30pm - Friday 15 September
Lantern Backroom, Navan, Co Meath
Peter Fallon, House Bard at The Folk Club, Navan will be joining the rest of the Hinterland House Band, Declan O’Rourke, Steve Gunn, Colette Clinton, Anthony Cregan and Oisin Leech & the Weathermen on September 15th in the Lantern Backroom. Tickets: €20.00
Deeds and Their Days, is Peter Fallon's rendition of Hesiod's (c.700 bce) Works and Days. The energy of his sprightly verses propels a version of man’s origins, an ancient almanac, a store of instructions for the best way to live on earth and the drama of the poet’s address to, and condemnation of, his brother, Perses.
Available from The Gallery Press