Overview

This collection of essays and reviews by one of Ireland's leading poets and critics moves from assessments of the work of individual poets' work to explorations of broader themes and topics in Irish cultural history.

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9781881871521

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Reviews

Gerald Dawe is an explorer, like Darwin and Humboldt, sailing way beyond the boundaries of his own Belfast identity in order to chart the minutiae and the ordinary design of far-flung terrain. - Hugo Hamilton, author of Speckled People and The Harbor Boys Dawe is one of those critics no society can afford to be without... whose aims are essentially earthed in political decency and in the shaping power of imagination. - Sean Dunne, The Irish Times Gerald Dawe shows himself amicably opinionated, vigilant, resourceful and straightforward and can claim a good deal of affinity with Louis MacNeice's 'Individualist,' escaping with his dog on the other side of the fair. - Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement

One binding theme is the question of audience, a literary public, and how writers to deceive themselves about their significance. In Ireland poets can still have a social role, and Dawe brings to his thinking about literature's place his sense of the writer at odds with society and its histories. It is a kind of aesthetic statement about the responsibilities and challenges of being a poet in a modernizing society like Ireland, which has a complex and contested history. -Terence Brown, author of Ireland: A Social & Cultural History, 1922-2001 and The Life of W.B. Yeats

Gerald Dawe's vision is uncompromisingly unromantic and uncomfortably aware of our violent and cruel world.----C.S. Water, author of The Honest Ulsterman Gerald Dawe is an explorer, like Darwin and Humboldt, sailing way beyond the boundaries of his own Belfast identity in order to chart the minutiae and the ordinary design of far flung terrain, searching for the geographical and the personal and discovering in the process a kind of truth and courageous expression in his work which is unique and transforming, and ultimately also reveals itself as a true homecoming.----Hugo Hamilton, author of Speckled People and The Harbor Boys One binding theme is the question of audience, a literary public, and how writers to deceive themselves about their significance. In Ireland poets can still have a social role, and Dawe brings to his thinking about literature's place his sense of the writer at odds with society and its histories. It is a kind of aesthetic statement about the responsibilities and challenges of being a poet in a modernizing society like Ireland, which has a complex and contested history. ----Terence Brown, author of Ireland: A Social & Cultural History, 1922-2001 and The Life of W.B. Yeats This is a report from the immdediate field of action of Irish writing. It takes the form of a poet reading others and striking home time and again on the issues and questions that really matter. The effect is a challenge to the whole notion of what it is to be an Irish poet, or indeed, an Irish critic. A brave invigorating collection.----Thomas Kilroy, playwright and novelist

Gerald Dawe's vision is uncompromisingly unromantic and uncomfortably aware of our violent and cruel world. -- -C.S. Water * author of The Honest Ulsterman * Gerald Dawe is an explorer, like Darwin and Humboldt, sailing way beyond the boundaries of his own Belfast identity in order to chart the minutiae and the ordinary design of far flung terrain, searching for the geographical and the personal and discovering in the process a kind of truth and courageous expression in his work which is unique and transforming, and ultimately also reveals itself as a true homecoming. -- -Hugo Hamilton * author of Speckled People and The Harbor Boys * One binding theme is the question of audience, a literary public, and how writers to deceive themselves about their significance. In Ireland poets can still have a social role, and Dawe brings to his thinking about literature's place his sense of the writer at odds with society and its histories. It is a kind of aesthetic statement about the responsibilities and challenges of being a poet in a modernizing society like Ireland, which has a complex and contested history. -- -Terence Brown * author of Ireland: A Social & Cultural History, 1922-2001 and The Life of W.B. Yeats * This is a report from the immdediate field of action of Irish writing. It takes the form of a poet reading others and striking home time and again on the issues and questions that really matter. The effect is a challenge to the whole notion of what it is to be an Irish poet, or indeed, an Irish critic. A brave invigorating collection. -- -Thomas Kilroy * playwright and novelist *

Author Information

GERALD DAWE, born in Belfast, taught at University College Galway for many years. Currently a Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, he has published numerous collections of poetry and criticism.

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