Gerald Dawe is the 28th recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Prize for Irish Poetry which will be celebrated at a reception on the evening of May 16, 2024. This is a seminar about the award winning poet delivered by David Gardiner, the Director of Irish Studies at St. Thomas University and Editor of the New Hibernia Review. Free to the public.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and lives in County Dublin. He is a Professor of English and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin where he was
the founder director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Center for Irish Writing. He has held academic appointments and writing residencies in the U.S., Britain, and Europe. Throughout his writing career, Gerald Dawe has fostered the careers of many Irish poets through his several anthologies and helped to set the tone for a
resurgence of Irish literary and cultural criticism through his important journal Krino. His many poetry collections include The Morning Train, Lake Geneva, Points West, Mickey Finn’s Air, The Last Peacock, and Another Time: Poems 1978-2023. Other books include the memoir trilogy Northern Chronicles, Politic Words; Women Writing/Writing History, and Balancing Acts: Conversations with Gerald Dawe on a life in poetry.

Director of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Irish Studies and Editor of New Hibernia Review, Dr. David Gardiner received his degrees from University College Galway, Penn State University and his PhD from Loyola University, Chicago. He was founding editor of the international arts journal, An Sionnach, which published Van Morrison, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan, Ciaran Carson, Theo Dorgan and Eamonn Wall, among others. He has served as Burns Scholar at Boston College, Director of Irish Studies at Creighton University where, for 10 years, he directed the largest summer program at Trinity College Dublin, and as UK Arts Fellow at the University of Ulster Coleraine (Northern Ireland). He has authored more than 60 journal publications and five books, including the Salmon poetry collections Downstate (2009) and The Chivalry of Crime (2015). His forthcoming collection, Skenographia, will also be published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland.

This free event takes place in the education classroom located across from the McKiernan Library on the mezzanine level which, unfortunately, can only be accessed via a flight of stairs. This event is part of the 2024 Irish Arts Week. 

This award is made possible by the generosity of the O’Shaughnessy Foundation, and O’Shaughnessy Family.