Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe (22 April 1952 – 29 May 2024) was an Irish poet, academic and literary critic.

Life and career Gerald Dawe was born in 1952 in north Belfast, Northern Ireland to a Protestant family. He was the son of Gordon Dawe and Norma Fitzgerald Bradshaw and grew up with his mother, sister, grandmother, and great-grandmother. He lived mostly in the Skegoniell area and attended Seaview Primary School and then Orangefield Boys Secondary School across the city in East Belfast. While at school, he participated in the Lyric Youth Theatre under the teacher and theatre director, Sam McCready. He also started to write poems and after a brief period living in London, he returned to the North and attended the College of Business Studies before proceeding to the fledgling New University of Ulster (1971-1974) where his professor was the literary critic and novelist, Walter Allen. At the university he was associated with the so-called Coleraine Cluster of poets and writers. In 1974, he graduated receiving a B.A.(Hons) in English.

After graduation, Dawe worked briefly as an assistant librarian at the Fine Arts department, in the Central Library in Belfast before being awarded a Major State Award for Postgraduate Research from the Department of Education, Northern Ireland. He also started to lecture in the Department of English at the university.

In Galway, he met Dorothea Melvin, his future wife, and settled in east Galway with his family – Iarla and Olwen.

In 1988 he was appointed Lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin and for the next five years commuted between his home in Galway and work in Dublin before the family moved to Dublin in 1992. He was appointed a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2004, a Professor in English and the inaugural director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing (1997-2015). He retired from Trinity College Dublin in 2017. He also held visiting professorships at Boston College and Villanova University in the United States as well as receiving International Writers' Fellowships from the Hawthorden Foundation (UK) and the Ledig Roholt Foundation Switzerland.

Dawe lived in Dun Laoghaire with his wife, Dorothea, who was chairperson of the 'think-tank', Encounter, director of the cultural resource body, Cultures of Ireland and head of public affairs at Ireland's national theatre, The Abbey, during the late 1990s and a board member of the Irish Association.

Dawe died at his home in Dun Laoghaire, on 29 May 2024, at the age of 72.

Work His first full collection, Sheltering Places, was published in 1978, receiving two years later, a Bursary for Poetry from the Arts Council of Ireland. His second collection, The Lundys Letter, was published in 1985 and was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. The collection was concerned with the cultural and social roots of his background in Belfast and of the different Irish and emigre histories of his own family, highlighted by his new life in the west of Ireland.

Around 1990, he co-founded Lagan Press with Fortnight magazine manager Patrick Ramsey (absorbed by the Verbal Arts Centre in 2013). Dawe's How's the Poetry Going?: Literary Politics & Ireland Today (1991) was the new publisher's first book.

Over the next thirty years he published several books of poetry with Gallery Press. These included Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999), Lake Geneva (2003), Points West (2008) and 'Mickey Finn's Air' (2014). In addition, several selections of his poetry were published. He also edited several collections of contemporary Irish poets and co-translated (with Marco Sonzogni) into English the early poems of the Sicilian poet and Nobel laureate, Salvatore Quasimodo. In 2024 a selection of his poems in translation entitled Versions, Selected Poems by Gerald Dawe in translation, edited by Florence Impens was published.

He also published works on Irish poetry and cultural issues, much of which is collected in his prose works: The Proper Word: Collected Criticism (2007), Of War and War's Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing (2015), In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast (2017) and The Wrong Country: Essays on Modern Irish Writing (2018).

Critical perspective John Brown. "In the Chair" Salmon Publishing 2000 An Sionnach: A Journal of Literature, and the Arts, "A Special Issue dedicated to the work of Gerald Dawe", 3:1 (Spring 2007) Nicholas Allen. "Introduction", Gerald Dawe, The Proper Word: Ireland, Poetry, Politics (2007) Stan Smith. Something Misplaced: Gerald Dawe, Irish Poetry and the Construction of Modern Identity (2005) Cathal Dallat. "Mapping the Territory", The Guardian (UK) 18 October 2003 Katrina Goldstone. "Twilight Zones", Irish Studies Review (May 2005) Jonathan Ellis. "Out of Time", Metre (Winter 2001/02)

Publications

Poetry 2024: Versions, Selected Poems by Gerald Dawe in translation, edited by Florence Impens 2023: Another Time: Poems 1978-2023, Gallery Books ) 2019: The Last Peacock, Gallery Press 2015: Early Poems, Gallery Press 2014: Mickey Finn's Air, Gallery Press 2018: Selected Poems, Gallery Press 2008: Points West, Gallery Press 2003: Lake Geneva, Gallery Press 1999: The Morning Train, Gallery Press 1995: Heart of Hearts, Gallery Press 1991: Sunday School, Gallery Press 1990: The Water Table, Honest Ulsterman 1985: The Lundys Letter, Gallery Press 1978: Sheltering Places, Rudyard Press 1976: Heritages, Aquila Press

Essays 2023: Balancing Acts: Conversations with Gerald Dawe on a Life in Poetry, edited by Frank Ferguson 2023: Politic Words: Writing Women| Writing History 2022: Northern Windows/Southern Stars: Selected Early Essays 1983-1994, Peter Lang 2021: A City Imagined: Belfast Soulscapes, Merrion Press 2020: Looking Through You: Northern Chronicles, Merrion Press 2020: Dreaming of Home: Seven Irish Writers, Peter Lang 2020: The Sound of the Shuttle: Essays on Cultural Belonging & Protestantism in Northern Ireland, Irish Academic Press 2018: The Wrong Country: Essays on Modern Irish Writing, Irish Academic Press 2017: In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast, Merrion Press 2015: Of War and War's Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing 2007: My Mother-City, Lagan Press 1998: The Rest is History, Abbey Press 1991: How's the Poetry Going, Lagan Press

As editor 2018: The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets, Cambridge University Press 2009: Earth Voices Whispering: An Anthology of Irish War Poetry 1914-45, Blackstaff Press 2008: Earth Voices Whispering: Irish poetry of war, 1914–1945 (2008) 1991: The New Younger Irish Poets, Blackstaff Press 1991: Yeats: The Poems, a new selection 1982: The Younger Irish Poets, Blackstaff Press

As Co-editor 2019: Ethna McCarthy Poems with Eoin O'Brien 2012: Beautiful Strangers: Ireland & the world of the Fifties with Darryl Jones and Nora Pelizarria, Peter Lang (} 2012: Ruined Pages: New Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc with Aodan Mac Poilin, Blackstaff 2008: Heroic Heart: A Charles Donnelly Reader with Kay Donnelly, Lagan Press 2008: The Night Fountain: Selected early poems of Salvatore Quasimodo with Marco Sonzogni, Arc Publications 2008: Dramatis Personae and other writings by Stewart Parker with Maria Johnston and Clare Wallace, Czech Institute of Egyptology 2008: High Pop: the Irish Times column of Stewart Parker with Maria Johnston, Lagan Press 2004: The Writer Fellow with Terence Brown 2001: The Ogham Stone: an anthology of modern Ireland with Michael Mulreany 1996: Krino: the Review, 1986–1996, an anthology of modern Irish writing with Jonathan Williams 1994: Ruined Pages: Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc with Aodan Mac Poilin 1991: The Poet's Place: Essays on Ulster Literature & Society with John Wilson Foster 1985: Across a Roaring Hill: the Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland with Edna Longley

Film 2023: Gerald Dawe – Out Of The Ordinary, BBC

Prizes and awards 2024: Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award 2000: Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for Poetry 1999: Ledig-Rowholt International Writers Fellowship (Switzerland) 1987: Hawthorden International Writers Fellowship (UK) 1984: Macaulay Fellowship in Literature for The Lundys Letter 1980: Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for Poetry 1974-77: Major State Award (Northern Ireland Department of Education)

Distinctions 2016-17: Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College, Cambridge (UK) 2013: The Moore Institute Fellowship, NUI, Galway 2009: Heimbold Chair, Irish Studies, Villanova University, Philadelphia 2005: J.J. Burns Visiting Professor, Boston College 2004: Fellow, Trinity College Dublin

Interviews 2016: Eleanor Doorley http://thelonelycrowd.org/2016/09/26/balancing-acts-gerald-dawe-in-conversation-with-eleanor-doorley/ 2016: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitywriters/writers/gerald-dawe/ 2015: Dave Lourdan http://humag.co/features/gerald-dawe 2015: Philip Coleman http://www.icarusmagazine.com/may-2015/2015/9/19/featured-a-conversation-between-gerald-dawe-and-philip-coleman 2014: Andrea Rea http://www.drb.ie/essays/good-remembering