Born in North Belfast on April 22nd 1952, Gerald (Chartres) Dawe was educated at Orangefield Boys School, University of Ulster (1971-1974) and National University of Ireland, Galway where he taught for many years (1974-1987). In Galway he founded Trio: Modern Poetry in Performance and the innovative public workshops, Starting to Write. He was founder editor of Writing in the West, a literary supplement published by The Connacht Tribune (1980-1985) and founder editor of Krino: The Review (1986-1996). He was appointed lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin in 1988, elected Fellow of the College in 2004 and is the inaugural director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, School of English at Trinity College, having established with Brendan Kennelly the first Masters programme in creative writing offered by an Irish university. He has been John J Burns Visiting Professor, Boston College (2005) and Heimbold Professor, Villanova University, Philadelphia (2009).
His early poems were published in the sixties and seventies in Britain and Ireland and first collected in Sheltering Places (Blackstaff Press 1978). Since then The Gallery Press has published his poetry: The Lundys Letter (1985), Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999), Lake Geneva (2003) and Points West (2008). He is the recipient of various awards and fellowships including the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature, Hawthorden International Writers Fellowship and Ledwig-Rowolht International Writer Fellowship.
Gerald Dawe has published three collections of essays, including The Proper Word: Collected Criticism (2007), My Mother-City (2007), The World as Province: Selected Prose (2009), Conversations: on Poets & Poetry (due in 2011), as well as editing numerous anthologies of Irish poetry and criticism, including the groundbreaking Earth Voices Whispering: Irish war poetry 1914-1945 (2008). He has given readings and lectures in many parts of the world. Married to Dorothea Melvin, he lives in County Dublin.
August 2010