John F. Deane was born on Achill Island, Co Mayo, Ireland. He is the founder of Poetry Ireland, the National Poetry Society, and The Poetry Ireland Review. He is founder of the Dedalus Press, of which he was editor from 1985 until 2006. His poems have been translated into many languages and in 2022 the Polish Publisher, Znak, published his Selected Poems in Polish translation. Deane is the recipient of many awards for his poetry and is a member of Aosdána, the body established by the Arts Council to honour artists ‘whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland’. In 2007 he was made Chevalier en l’ordre des arts et des lettres by the French Government. The fine arts press, Guillemot, Cornwall, in 2019 published a limited edition book, Like the Dewfall and in 2022 a further booklet, Voix Celeste, both with artwork by Tony Martin. In late 2022, Irish Pages Press published Darkness Between Stars, a selection of poems focusing on questions of faith and poetry by both John F. Deane and James Harpur, including an email dialogue on their individual writing processes. His collections from Carcanet include Naming of the Bones (2021), Selected and New Poems (2023) and Jonah and Me (2025). Author photo © Moya Nolan.
This biography is taken from the Carcanet Press website.
