31/05/2024
Gerry Dawe (1952-2024)
He was a lone ranger. He did his own thing, in his own way.
We met forty years ago and I published the first of nine Gallery books in 1985, the most recent of them just last September: Another Time (Poems 1978-2023). You'd know a poem by Gerry Dawe a mile away - its plain speech unadorned by any frilly effect or affectation, its attention to the every day, memories of Belfast, of the West of ireland, a holiday abroad. And the straightforwardness of his syntax and his favoured unrhymed quatrains was, in fact, the mark of style. He'd take a cliché and give it a shake. Working with him on individual poems and the making of each of his collections was a practical, let's-get-on-with-it pleasure. We never once locked horns.
He remained stoical through his illness. In March he went to Switzerland to read at the Joyce Foundation where a touring exhibition devoted to his work was being presented. And just weeks ago he wrote to me to say, 'I've been working though and hope to send you something different at the end of summer.'
The last time we met we'd lunch together in Dublin. Afterwards I walked with him to the DART station to continue our conversation. Then I found myself getting on the train and we kept talking all the way to Dalkey Then we got off, crossed the line and resumed our conversation and our journey northward - he to Dun Laoghaire, I to the city centre. We never finished that conversation.
I'll miss his honesty, his seriousness and his laughter. Another down. It's getting, oh, so lonely.
To his beloved Dorothea, to Olwen and Iarla, we send heartfelt condolences.
Peter Fallon
