Gerald Dawe, who has died aged 72, was a poet of Northern Ireland’s liberal Protestant tradition, even while plying his trade from Galway and Dublin. He was equally devoted to emerging writers north and south, as a teacher, anthologist and publisher, and for many years was fellow and professor of English at Trinity College Dublin.
He attracted comparison to Derek Mahon, exploring a less-voiced north Belfast lower middle-class upbringing. Nostalgia, for Dawe, was coping with loss in the present – frequently loss of home. Memory is not just about the past, but finding a route into now: poetry, “an artful way of making that happen”.
