Statement by President Higgins on the death of Gerald Dawe
Date: Thu 30th May, 2024 | 16:17
“The last collection I received from my dear friend Gerald Dawe was ‘Revenant’, a book of poems with images by John Behan. A very beautiful book with a very special poem, ‘Only Son’, dedicated to his father. My reaction to that poem in the collection was that Gerald Dawe’s work was getting better and better and arriving at what I think might be 10 collections. A very distinctive work of poem-making that was bringing richer and richer results.
Gerry Dawe wrote out of a unique experience that gave him a special place and memory in contemporary poetry. His work embraced the most important themes of life and the heart, out of a red-bricked context of Belfast. In the collections, the most sensitive of themes are undertaken with a meticulous care of crafting that seemed to me a recall of all the diverse skills of the shipyard.
The standard he set for himself was so high that nothing is redundant or irrelevant in the lines, something special is being recreated or is the basis of a response.
His passing represents a very significant and special loss to Irish poetry and to all those who love poems. About to receive an international award in the United States, it would have been a further recognition to the appreciation that is widely held for his work.
Gerry and I shared an experience of what was then known as University College Galway. We shared not only the experience of pursuing research – in his case, among many interests, an outstanding work on Carleton. We were fellow activists in politics in times of hope, occasional advance, and disappointment. We travelled long distances and not without humour in such endeavours, something he was recorded in one of his poems which I treasure.
It was no surprise to any of us when he founded the Oscar Wilde Centre at Trinity College. His interest and work on Wilde and his period had been developed over a long period.
I do not remember him concentrating on a single area to the exclusion of anything that might interest him. For me, his was a most important voice that was able to relate the experiences of those terraced houses where people put the minutiae of daily life – of existence, neighbours and friendships – ahead of dominating ideological divides.
He had an appreciation of all the Northern poets, but he had a particular instinct for the proximate, the intimate and the symbolism of tiny things. This was so reflected in, for example, ‘Looking Through You: Northern Chronicles’, published in 2020. As the time of his passing came, the work was simply getting better and better.
In dedicating that book to Dorothea, he quoted Joseph Brodsky, “At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn’t be retained by the mind”. In that regard, Gerald Dawes’ work is an outstanding achievement.
Ireland has lost a great poet and so many of us a warm and valued friend.
I will miss him deeply, as will Sabina and all our family. But the greatest loss will be to Dorothea, their daughter Olwen and his stepson Iarla. To them, Sabina and I wish to send our deepest sympathy and our love at this time.”
ENDS