Gerard Fanning is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Irish poetry, "an enigmatic surveyor with an appetite for the exotic cultivar", as one reviewer has called him, a maker of taut yet limpid verse.
New and Selected Poems gathers the poet's own choice of his three previous collections, together with twenty-five new poems which manage to be both spontaneous and inventive and at the same time formally-grounded, full of what another reviewer called "elegant intensity".
"These poems combine a tone that is intimate and urgent with a formal reticence and an absolute care and respect for language."
Colm Toibin, Books of the Year, The Irish Times
"Gerard Fanning anchors his meditative, often dreamlike poetry in the physical world – these are melancholy poems (run through with threads of memory, anxiety, illness and loss) but despite their sobriety they contain moments of real glory."
Sarah Crown, The Guardian
"Fanning’s loose-limbed verse, with its understated rhyme and comfortable diction, are constructions of extreme delicacy, alert to the shifts of air and spirit."
Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times
Gerard Fanning was born in Dublin in 1952. He is a graduate of University College Dublin. He worked for a time in Barcelona before joining the Irish Civil Service. He has published three collections with Dedalus Press: Easter Snow (1992), Working for the Government (1999), Water & Power (2004) and a chapbook, Canower Sound (2003) with the Shinbone Press. His awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Brendan Behan Award for Poetry and Literature bursaries from the Arts Council/Ireland. Fanning’s poems have also been adapted by the composer Ian Wilson for his Harbouring Suite (2008).
New and Selected Poems gathers the poet's own choice of his three previous collections, together with twenty-five new poems which manage to be both spontaneous and inventive and at the same time formally-grounded, full of what another reviewer called "elegant intensity".
"These poems combine a tone that is intimate and urgent with a formal reticence and an absolute care and respect for language."
Colm Toibin, Books of the Year, The Irish Times
"Gerard Fanning anchors his meditative, often dreamlike poetry in the physical world – these are melancholy poems (run through with threads of memory, anxiety, illness and loss) but despite their sobriety they contain moments of real glory."
Sarah Crown, The Guardian
"Fanning’s loose-limbed verse, with its understated rhyme and comfortable diction, are constructions of extreme delicacy, alert to the shifts of air and spirit."
Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times
Gerard Fanning was born in Dublin in 1952. He is a graduate of University College Dublin. He worked for a time in Barcelona before joining the Irish Civil Service. He has published three collections with Dedalus Press: Easter Snow (1992), Working for the Government (1999), Water & Power (2004) and a chapbook, Canower Sound (2003) with the Shinbone Press. His awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Brendan Behan Award for Poetry and Literature bursaries from the Arts Council/Ireland. Fanning’s poems have also been adapted by the composer Ian Wilson for his Harbouring Suite (2008).