±«Óãtv

An intimate profile of poet Gerald Dawe, who was born in Belfast in 1952.

In his writing, Gerald has explored the meeting ground between his own personal experience and the political and cultural realities. For Gerald, that personal experience began with a childhood in north Belfast: growing up in a household of women (mother, grandmother and sister) and in a city shaped by its industrial past. It was also a society – in Gerald’s experience – that was unmistakably British and still coming to terms with the aftermath of the war.

Cultural touchstones for Gerald – children’s comics and toys that were read and played with, radio and television programmes that were listened to and watched, advertising, food and drink that was consumed – all came with a British imprint and enduring resonance.

In the 1960s, Gerald embraced a very different Belfast - one that revolved around music. Notably Them and Van Morrison, but also visiting artists such as the Small Faces and Cream. For Gerald, Belfast was a city in which, after a night out, you could walk a girl home to any of its four corners.

As the 60s drew to a close, the curtain came down – and with it the realisation, for Gerald, that the poison had always been there. It was just that his world of the 60s had hidden it for him. The bitter sectarianism that swept over his home city and the rest of Northern Ireland came close to home, with the 1975 sectarian killing of another aspiring young poet.