Gerald's poem for LookListen is called "After the Storm" which the author dedicated to Ron Ewart, a Trinity graduate from the fifties.

‘After the Storm’ was written about a house in the hills outside Lucca owned by Ron Ewart, a friend of ours where we have stayed over many years. The house stands in a little square at the top of a very windy hilly road that leads to a church and waterfall. Cut into the roof is a small terrace where, weather permitting, we sit and gaze wondrously at the valley below and unwind. The poem’s a kind of love poem to the place where we’ve had such good times and looked out on happenings elsewhere in the world. The poem’s dedicated to Ron who graduated from Trinity in the fifties and retains a great fondness for College. He’s also a vastly knowledgeable reader of Joyce and Beckett and much else. So often days are spent talking about books. Once, outside in the alley that runs by his living room, I could hear the quiet chat of a young couple, sweet nothings, it used to be called. And thinking back on the place and in particular to a stormy evening that kept us all in doors, I wrote the poem, ‘After the Storm’, simple as that.

Belfast born poet Gerald Dawe taught for many years at NUI, Galway before being appointed lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin in 1988. A Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, he has held visiting professorships in Boston College and Villanova University, Philadelphia. He 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. His recent collections include The Morning Train, Lake Geneva and Points West, as well as the anthology, Earth Voices Whispering: Irish War Poetry 1914-1945.

'Gerald Dawe moved from Belfast, first to the west of Ireland. He 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', The Guardian (UK)

©Points West Gallery Press 2008