Selected Poems by Oscar Wilde Centre Director Gerald Dawe Recently Launched

May 11, 2012

Since its first appearance in book form in 1978, poet and Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, Gerald Dawe’s poetry has been praised for its “feeling of unpadded completeness and unforced structure” (Alastair MacLean, TLS). His achievement has been described by Dennis O’Driscoll as “brave and risk-taking, finely tuned and perfectly pitched”, and by John McAuliffe as “serious and seriously enjoyable”. Selected Poems is a generous representation of this gifted poet’s work. Spanning over thirty-five years, in poems that move through Irish city and country life - Belfast, Galway, Dublin - to Italian and Polish landscapes and the American east coast, both of the present and ranging through the past half-century, Gerald Dawe’s clear and unadorned voice articulates “an imagination of European scope” (Terence Brown). “Serious, often grave, but inculcated with such sympathy and passion and affection that any obscurity is the enemy. It's as if what he has to tell us is so vital that clarity - such a virtue - is a moral matter,” as also described by novelist Richard Ford.

Gerald  recently launched Selected Poems in Trinity College with guests reading including the Provost and poets Brendan Kennelly, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Iggy Mc Govern. At  Cúirt International Literature Festival, it was   launched by Thomas Kilroy and also in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Library Voices Series in the Town Hall, Dun Laoghaire on  May 9th last  with guests including Seamus Heaney, Nicholas Grene and Chris Binchy. It will be launched in Westport at The Creel Restaurant Thursday 7th June with Thomas Kilroy and Sean Lysaght and at The West Cork Literary Festival on Friday 13th July.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfastin 1952. He is inaugural director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, Associate Professor in English and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. The Gallery Press has published six collections including The Lundys Letter, for which he received the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature, Lake Genevaand Points West. He has also published The Proper Word: Collected Criticism and Conversations: Poets and Poetry. He has been a visiting professor at Boston College and Villanova University in the United States.