Selected Poems

Since its first appearance in book form in 1978 Gerald Dawe’s poetry has been praised for its ‘feeling of unpadded completeness and unforced structure’ (Alastair MacLean, TLS). His achievement has been described by Dennis O’Driscoll as ‘brave and risk-taking, finely tuned and perfectly pitched’ and, by John McAuliffe, as ‘serious and seriously enjoyable’.

Selected Poems is a generous representation of this gifted poet’s work. Spanning over thirty-five years, in poems that move through Irish city and country life — Belfast, Galway, Dublin — to Italian, Swiss and Polish landscapes and the American east coast, both of the present and ranging through the past half-century, Gerald Dawe’s clear and unadorned voice — in the words of Terence Brown — articulates ‘an imagination of European scope’.