Gerald Dawe – författare

In Another World is a unique trip through Belfast, mapped into the mystic through the timeless music of Van ‘the Man’ Morrison. The aptly soulful and inventive prose stems from the electric wit of acclaimed poet and fellow Belfast man, Gerald Dawe.

Struck by the extraordinary brand of rhythm and blues that was Morrison’s brainchild, Dawe’s book is a celebration of the inspirations that underlie Morrison’s music. Silhouetted in the work is Belfast, moody and vibrant, and the formative influence of the pre-Troubles northern capital on Morrison’s musical direction.

Dawe’s writing transmutes the tender and unforgettable strains of Morrison’s work, from the release in 1968 of Astral Weeks to the publication in 2014 of Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics. A powerful tribute to mark Van Morrison’s accomplishments, In Another World taps into his legacy’s eclectic soul and is kin to its enchantments.

In Another World is a unique trip through Belfast, mapped into the mystic through the timeless music of Van ‘the Man’ Morrison. The aptly soulful and inventive prose stems from the electric wit of acclaimed poet and fellow Belfast man, Gerald Dawe.

Struck by the extraordinary brand of rhythm and blues that was Morrison’s brainchild, Dawe’s book is a celebration of the inspirations that underlie Morrison’s music. Silhouetted in the work is Belfast, moody and vibrant, and the formative influence of the pre-Troubles northern capital on Morrison’s musical direction.

Dawe’s writing transmutes the tender and unforgettable strains of Morrison’s work, from the release in 1968 of Astral Weeks to the publication in 2014 of Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics. A powerful tribute to mark Van Morrison’s accomplishments, In Another World taps into his legacy’s eclectic soul and is kin to its enchantments.

Looking Through You: Northern Chronicles, the sequel to renowned Belfast poet and author Gerald Dawe’s critically acclaimed In Another World: Van Morrison and Belfast, is the evocative record of the musical, literary and artistic influences that inspired and forged Dawe’s awakening as a poet, and his career in Irish literature.

Taking its bearings from Belfast in the 1960s, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album and the energising shock of reading the great American poets Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, Dawe’s engagingly lyrical style has produced an evocative and memorable record of the music, poetry and culture of growing up in the northern capital.

Featuring the stunning photography of Euan Gëbler, this literary memoir is a must-have for fans of Dawe’s work, a superb introduction to his world for new readers, and, in his own words, may help ‘renew Belfast and the ordinary life and lives of the city, and allow its people to overcome as best they can the seemingly irreconcilable and unsolvable conflicts of the past’.

A City Imagined is in praise of the city of Belfast. With a clear eye on the truths that history has demonstrated of the northern capital’s sectarian and violent past, the memoir opens in the seemingly stable world of the 1950s, with Dawe enraptured by his mother’s storytelling, which hinted at previous lives lived.

Written in his highly regarded wry and lyrical style, Dawe’s memoir sketches the outlines of his life as he starts to understand the city in which he was born, before embracing some of the local writers whose early work had such an influential part in nudging him in the direction of writing – poets, in the main, whose first books were read with the enthusiasm of a young man beguiled by the language and music of poetry.

Building on the critical acclaim of In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast and Looking Through You: Northern Chronicles, this third and final volume of the Northern Chronicles trilogy completes a fascinating and rich portrait of the celebrated poet’s tangled and ever-evolving relationship with his native city.

The Sound of the Shuttle is an eloquent and compelling selection of essays written over four decades by Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe, exploring the difficult and at times neglected territory of cultural belonging and northern Protestantism. The title, taken from a letter of John Keats during a journey through the north-east in 1818, evokes the lives, now erased from history, of the thousands of workers in the linen industry, tobacco factories and shipyards of Belfast.

Sketching in literary, social and political contexts to widen the frame of reference, Dawe offers fascinating insights into the current debate about a ‘New Ireland’ by bringing into critical focus the experiences, beliefs and achievements of an (at times) maligned and often misread community, generally referred to as Northern protestants.

In making the telling point that ‘The jagged edges of the violent past are still locked within ideological vices’, The Sound of the Shuttle is an insightful and honest report based upon many years of creative and critical practice.

An essential book for our changing times.

The Sound of the Shuttle is an eloquent and compelling selection of essays written over four decades by Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe, exploring the difficult and at times neglected territory of cultural belonging and northern Protestantism. The title, taken from a letter of John Keats during a journey through the north-east in 1818, evokes the lives, now erased from history, of the thousands of workers in the linen industry, tobacco factories and shipyards of Belfast.

Sketching in literary, social and political contexts to widen the frame of reference, Dawe offers fascinating insights into the current debate about a ‘New Ireland’ by bringing into critical focus the experiences, beliefs and achievements of an (at times) maligned and often misread community, generally referred to as Northern protestants.

In making the telling point that ‘The jagged edges of the violent past are still locked within ideological vices’, The Sound of the Shuttle is an insightful and honest report based upon many years of creative and critical practice.

An essential book for our changing times.