Shelf Life
Gerald Dawe
The Belfast born poet and writer published his first full poetry collection, Sheltering Places, in 1978. He is the inaugural director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, where he directs the graduate writing programme, and a Senior Lecturer in English with the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. The prolific Dawe had no less than five books published in 2008 – including Earth Voices Whispering: An Anthology of Irish War Poetry 1914-45 (Blackstaff) and High Pop: The “Irish Times” Column 1970-1976 (Lagan Press).
Favourite book from childhood
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island – what else?!
Book I didn't make it through
Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.
Secret reading vice
Reading three books at the same time.
Most under-rated book
Strumpet City by James Plunkett.
Most over-rated book
Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses.
Irish writer I always look out for
Maurice Leitch.
One book I'd love to have written
For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell.
The book I go back to time and again
The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
