Early life
Gerald Dawe was born inLater life and work
In Galway, he met Dorothea Melvin, his future wife, and settled in east Galway with his family – Iarla and Olwen. His second collection, ''The Lundys Letter'', was published in 1985 and was awarded the prestigious Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. The collection was concerned with the cultural and social roots of his background in Belfast and of the different Northern Irish and emigre histories of his own family, highlighted by his new life in the west of Ireland. His subsequent volumes, ''Sunday School'' (1991) and ''Heart of Hearts'' (1995) developed and deepened this exploration of the cultural diversity of Northern Ireland's cultural inheritance as seen through the lifestyle and customs of one family. In 1988 he was appointed Lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin and for the next five years commuted between his home inCritical perspective
Richard Ford, the leading American novelist described Dawe's latest collection, Mickey Finn's Air (2014) in the following terms: ‘The poems, as a finely-made book ought, compose a kind of sinuous, un-dogmatic “answer” to the conjoined perplexities of the museum-catalog which is our memory, and of loss, and love, and our insubstantial self-knowledge. And flight. All of that in conflict with the wholly opposite urge: which is, to make life somehow stop-and-be-savored, make its sweet serenade audible, before it's too late. These are large concerns. And they are never ponderously set-in here. Indeed, finding these “variously contending discourses” present in the music of these poems, provides a sort of blesséd relief, as they come round and accumulate, and reward Seamus Heaney's injunction that a poem's reason for being is to provide “the stability conferred by a musically satisfying order of sounds.” Again, when you come to the end of this book you feel that something important has been stabilized – and beautifully – and asks our assent. these 20 poems both embody but also reconcile with their own “airs” – perfectly accessible, even conversational, with cunning interior rhymes, and deftly-encrypted structures that please without baffling or showing off—their diction so finely installed as to be noticeable only after the fact, which entices us to re-reading, and deepening our confidence that our attention's being masterfully superintended. Some of these poems are laments. But as with any lament, its double nature pleases as it sorrows... the sweet, interior music and the pull of lived life that so invigorates Mickey Finn's Air’.Commentary
* 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)Bibliography
Poetry
* ''Sheltering Places'' (1978) * ''The Lundys Letter'' (1985) * ''Sunday School'' (1991) * ''Heart of Hearts'' (1995) * ''The Morning Train'' (1999) * ''Lake Geneva'' (2003) * ''Points West'' (2008) * ''Selected Poems'' (2012) * "Mickey Finn's Air"(2014) * "Early Poems" (2015)Essays
* The Proper Word: Ireland, Poetry, Politics (2007) * Of War and War's Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing (2015) * In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast (2017) * The Wrong Country: Essays on Modern Irish Writing (2018) As editor * The Younger Irish Poets (1982) * The New Younger Irish Poets (1991) * Yeats: The Poems, a new selection (1991) * Earth Voices Whispering: Irish poetry of war, 1914–1945 (2008) * The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets (2018) As Co-editor * Across a Roaring Hill: the Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland with Edna Longley (1985) * The Poet's Place: Essays on Ulster Literature & Society with John Wilson Foster (1991) * Ruined Pages: Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc with Aodan Mac Poilin (1994; new edition 2011) *Krino: the Review, 1986–1996, an anthology of modern Irish writing with Jonathan Williams (1996) * The Ogham Stone: an anthology of modern Ireland with Michael Mulreany (2001) *The Writer Fellow with Terence Brown (2004) *High Pop: the Irish Times column of Stewart Parker with Maria Johnston (2008) * Dramatis Personae and other writings by Stewart Parker with Maria Johnston and Clare Wallace (2008) *The Night Fountain: Selected early poems of Salvatore Quasimodo with Marco Sonzogni (2008) *Heroic Heart: A Charles Donnelly Reader with Kay Donnelly (2011) *Ruined Pages: New Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc with Aodan Mac Poilin (2012) *Beautiful Strangers:Ireland & the world of the Fifties with Darryl Jones and Nora Pelazzi (2012)Prizes and awards
* 1974-77: Major State Award (Northern Ireland Department of Education) * 1980: Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for Poetry * 1984: Macaulay Fellowship in Literature for The Lundys Letter * 1987: Hawthorden International Writers Fellowship (UK) * 1999: Ledig-Rowholt International Writers Fellowship (Switzerland) * 2000: Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for PoetryDistinctions
* 2004: Fellow, Trinity College Dublin * 2005: J.J. Burns Visiting Professor, Boston College * 2009: Heimbold Chair, Irish Studies, Villanova University, Philadelphia * 2013: The Moore Institute Fellowship, NUI, Galway * 2016-17: Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College, Cambridge (UK)Recent interviews
* 2014: Andrea Rea http://www.drb.ie/essays/good-remembering * 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 * 2016: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitywriters/writers/gerald-dawe/ * 2016: Eleanor Doorley http://thelonelycrowd.org/2016/09/26/balancing-acts-gerald-dawe-in-conversation-with-eleanor-doorley/References
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