Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and educated at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and University College Galway (now National University of Ireland, Galway ) where he taught from 1977 to 1987. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he lectures in English and directs the graduate writing programme. He was Burns Visiting Professor at Boston College in 2005.

His first collection of poems, Sheltering Places (Blackstaff) was published in 1978. His second collection, The Lundys Letter (1985) published by The Gallery Press, was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. Other awards include Arts Council Bursaries for Poetry, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship and the Ledig-Rowholt International Writers' Award.

His subsequent poetry collections, Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Geneva (2003) have also been published by The Gallery Press. His collected essays, The Proper Word, edited by Nicholas Allen, was published in 2007. My Mother-City, a memoir, also appeared in 2007 along with a special issue of An Sionnach, a journal of literature, arts, and culture, devoted to his work. He is the new presenter of the RTE Poetry Programme. He lives in DunLaoghaire, County Dublin.

References

David Gardiner, 'Uneasy Domesticity', Eire/Ireland: xxix:2 ,1994                                                                  
Cathal Dallat, 'Mapping the Territory', The Guardian 18/10/2003
Thomas Dillon Redshaw, Irish Studies Review: 13 August 2005
Stan Smith, Irish Poetry and the construction of modern identity (Irish Academic Press, 2005)
Nicholas Allen, 'Introduction', Gerald Dawe, The Proper Word (Creighton University Press, 2007)
John Brown, In the Chair (Salmon Publishing, 2002)
Katrina Goldstone, 'Twilight Zones', Irish Studies Review 13:2 (May 2005)