GERALD DAWE
Gerald Dawe's collections can be purchased via Gallery Press and Amazon.
Early Poems [2015]
'Those dark and tense lyrics segue into the more tranquil tones and pastoral imagery of poems which mark a geographic transition from the North to the West of Ireland…and from outsiderish isolation to the community of marriage…moments shot through with a keen awareness of underlying dangers and instability'.
Kathleen McCracken, The Yellow Nib
Selected Poems [2012]
Spanning over thirty-five years, Gerald Dawe’s Selected Poems is a major representation of this gifted poet’s work. His clear and unadorned voice – in the words of Terence Brown – articulates ‘an imagination of European scope’.
‘Extraordinary consistency; a tone world and sensibility sustained with absolute integrity. Emotional intelligence will always distinguish the truly important poet’ Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times
‘A deeply impressive body of work, these poems are rooted, exploring delicately and exquisitely what it is to be alive and living in this world. A supreme and calm assurance,again and again, pitch perfect in tone and form ’ David Park
Mickey Finn's Air [2014]
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'Masterful' The Irish Times
'Mickey Finn's Air is a powerful and cohesive collection' culturenorthernireland.org
'The power of the poetry builds and poems like “Shortcuts” and “Another Country” lend substance to the collection. This is a poetry that trusts in the power of images …the commitment of this fine book is to saying how things are, without intervention, a commitment the book more than makes good on' .
Richard Hayes, Dublin Review of Books
Points West [2008]
'Gerald Dawe's subtlety and lyric control are the mark of a true poet; but it is [his] graceful and apparently effortless incorporation of the human struggle for transcendence which is the real measure of his importance' Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times
'A poet whose international outlook continually illuminates themes of home and origins, whose sensitivity to the vicissitudes of history sustains his intimations of solidarity, whose respect for the everyday ensures that its wonders are not taken for granted. And its soft-spoken tones, light-filled settings, delicate imagery and intimate occasions combine to produce poems which are as genial as they are accessible.’ George O’Brien
Lake Geneva [2003]
'Gerald Dawe’s poems are lakes which mirror the world with great precision, reflecting and redoubling even its smallest details. They are a brave and risk-taking achievement, finely tuned and perfectly pitched, poems which look deceptively simple but which mask the subtle sophistication of their artistry with the nifty nonchalance of their delivery' Dennis O'Driscoll
‘Dawe now teaches in Dublin at the heart of a Europe that informs his work as richly as it has infused, in turn, that of Joyce, Mahon and Paulin’ Cathal Dallat, The Guardian
‘For me, though, what’s “as good as it gets” is that there’s a poet of Dawe’s scrupulous tact and talent who persists in seeing and saying the world as it is, with neither fanfare nor capitulation, simply “paying particular attention/ to the exact moment - whatever it was”. Eamon Grennan, The Irish Times
The Morning Train [1999]
‘The poems come into a new focus - emerging as reports from a modern Purgatory, where the architects of modern history mingle with their victims and silent conspirators - Rene Magritte, English tourists, Nazi soldiers and others inhabit the placeless heaven of the Minos Hotel. Dawe’s felicitous and compressed phrasing suggests the allegorical dimension to these notes from the land of the dead. The Morning Train is a serious and seriously enjoyable book’. John Mc Auliffe, The Irish Times
‘With his dream of possible lands, his assurance that “there is always somewhere”, his proud foothold on the “neither here nor there”, Gerald Dawe soars beyond angst and apprehension to immerse himself fully in the real, the immediate, the worthwhile’. Belinda McKeon
'The Jazz Age looms large in Gerald Dawe's imagination, not only as a backdrop to many of his guesthouse settings and beach retreats, but also as a kind of murmuring backbeat, more or less continuously present. There is a languid art about the whole collection that constantly reminds me of F Scott Fitzgerald'. Jonathan Ellis, Metre
Heart of Hearts [1995]
'A quiet, elegant and eloquent voice, an eye for suggestive detail and a mind capable of making melody out of the mundane and the personal' Conor Kelly, Poetry Review
'The real stuff…The title poem,embodying the heart's questings in the lonely maladroit figure haunting station platforms, is a ten-line stunner' Andrew Waterman, London Magazine
'His ellipses and absences become haunting, his gentle moments of insight and transcendence illuminate like shafts of light and you see him achieve his deeper purpose: to embody the remarkable in the everyday…This is a less-deceived suburban world…the vision is uncompromisingly unromantic, and uncomfortably aware of our violent and cruel world' C S Water, Honest Ulsterman
The Lundys Letter [1985]
'Gerald Dawe speaks with a voice which is confidently individual at times and at times hesitant and suggestive with the doubtful tones of one who questions the assumptions upon which he and his culture rest'. Jonathan Allison
'His greatest strength as a poet [is] a stubborn resistance to the luxury of understanding, to explanation where he can find none, a willingness to try life even without meaning. There is steel under the mild tone.' Hugh Bredin, Fortnight
'Sometimes I read Dawe's poetry and I'm not sure what tt means exactly, but it scares the hell out of me' Tom Clyde, Linen Hall Review
Sunday School [1991]
'An understated, unpretentious and well-shaped collection with a delicate weight that accumulates with each reading' Frank Ormsby BBC Radio
'One might be tempted to compare Gerald Dawe to Derek Mahon. It's true that Mahon's tidy courtyards and terraced houses find an echo in some of the poems in Sunday School. But whereas Mahon uses poetic conjuring tricks to catch the whole of a fragmented reality, Dawe gives a solid, but distant version of his northern Protestant hinterland'' Kathleen Shields, The Connacht Tribune
Sheltering Places [1978]
''A feeling of unpadded completeness and unforced structure, of stockiness rather than frailty is what these poems convey' - Alasdair MacLean TLS
' Only Ciaran Carson and Gerald Dawe actually set the Irish world against a contemporary reality,rootless and ubiquitous' Roger Garfitt, London Magazine
'An impressive first collection…effective emotional reticence and deft feel for rhythmic modulation that is alive with unexplicated meaning' Terry Eagleton, Stand