Gerald Dawe, writer of ‘inimitable charm and good grace’ dies at 72
Gerald Dawe, one of Ireland’s most gifted writers, has died at 72 after a long illness. An esteemed artist and scholar, he was a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and the 28th recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Prize for Poetry, awarded in 2024.
Dawe held visiting professorships in Boston College and Villanova University, Philadelphia, and gave readings and lectures in many parts of the world. An archive of his papers is held at the Burns Library, Boston College.
Dawe published 13 collections of poetry, his most recent volume Another Time: Poems 1978-2023 (The Gallery Press).
“We met forty years ago and I published the first of nine Gallery books in 1985, the most recent of them just last September,” said Peter Fallon of The Gallery Press. “You’d know a poem by Gerry Dawe a mile away – its plain speech unadorned by any frilly effect or affectation, its attention to the every day, memories of Belfast, of the West of ireland, a holiday abroad. And the straightforwardness of his syntax and his favoured unrhymed quatrains was, in fact, the mark of style. He’d take a cliché and give it a shake. Working with him on individual poems and the making of each of his collections was a practical, let’s-get-on-with-it pleasure. We never once locked horns.
“He remained stoical through his illness. In March he went to Switzerland to read at the Joyce Foundation where a touring exhibition devoted to his work was being presented. And just weeks ago he wrote to me to say, ‘I’ve been working though and hope to send you something different at the end of summer.’
“The last time we met we’d lunch together in Dublin. Afterwards I walked with him to the DART station to continue our conversation. Then I found myself getting on the train and we kept talking all the way to Dalkey Then we got off, crossed the line and resumed our conversaion and our journey northward – he to Dun Laoghaire, I to the city centre. We never finished that conversation.
“To his beloved Dorothea, to Olwen and Iarla, we send heartfelt condolences.
“I’ll miss his honesty, his seriousness and his laughter. Another down. It’s getting, oh, so lonely.”
Dawe wrote as deeply in prose as in poetry. “It was with profound sadness to hear the news yesterday of the death of my most celebrated author, and a dear, dear friend, the incomparable Gerry Dawe,” said publisher Conor Graham of Merrion Press.
“I first met Gerry through his long time agent, Jonathan Williams, when we agreed to publish the first of Gerry’s Northern Chronicles memoirs, In Another World: Van Morrison and Belfast. From the moment I read his prose and met the man, I fell in love with both. His writing is exquisite, and it spoke to me directly through his lyrical evocation of the Belfast of my parents and the maelstrom of cultural and political influences sweeping the city in the late sixties.
“Our relationship blossomed with Gerry hitting a rich seam, “in the groove” as he was fond to say, and we went on to publish another five books in as many years, and each and every one was a joy and a pleasure to publish. We met often, and got on like old friends, and he was truly a beloved author to all our staff, always enamoured by his inimitable charm and good grace. We will all miss him dearly.”
