Gerard Fanning
“Gerard Fanning produced poems that are among the best written anywhere in the past half-century.” – Colm Tóibín
Author photo by Moya Nolan.
Gerard Fanning was born in Dublin in 1952. A graduate of University College Dublin, he worked for a time in Barcelona before joining the Irish Civil Service, with whom he worked in the Department of Social Welfare for almost forty years until taking early retirement in 2012. He published three original collections during his lifetime: Easter Snow (1992), Working for the Government (1999), and Water & Power (2004). There was also a chapbook entitled Canower Sound (2003) and a selection of previously uncollected poems in Hombre: New and Selected Poems (2011). Fanning’s poems were also included in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III (2013), edited by Conor O’Callaghan.
Fanning was awarded the inaugural Brendan Behan Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1993, as well as two major literature bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. His poems have also been adapted by the composer Ian Wilson for his Harbouring Suite (2008). Gerard Fanning was preparing his fourth collection when he died on October 18th, 2017, aged sixty-five.
Wake Forest University Press will publish his Collected Poems in 2024.
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