John Gallas Poetry

'the greatest New Zealand poet no one has ever heard of'

(Spinoff)

Poem for March 2025

*

A Vague Murmur

(published by the Katherine Mansfield Society: Tinakori)

Toddy swam in the early morning.

She winced over the pebbles  

and backstroked twice along Goose Bay,

watched by seals with dawnlight on their polls.

Back at the bach, she hung her togs

on the manuka and made frenchtoast

that she ate on the verandah while the sun

turned the woodwalls marmalade.

The day passed doing this and that:

finding white stones for the garden,

changing a cleatrow in the corrugatediron roof,

sewing a burst cushion for the old elbowchair.

In the evening, tilley-lamp on the table,

she soldiered on with a jigsaw-puzzle

of windmills and clogpeople, while tui

rustled and clucked in the mistfilling bush.

Dark water and moonslick. Seals bobbed asleep.

Moths came for light at the bug screen .

The burghers of Rotterdam drank their bright beer.

Toddy stared out of the chair.

                                                            * 

WHAT'S AFOOT?

The Maker's Top Ten

1. New publication: CARCANET now out: 'Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: The Complete Works' - my (his?) 198 tankas. See above: bookshops, order from www.carcanet.co.uk, or, for great overseas postage rate, Blackwell's Books www.blackwells.co.uk

2. Won the Bozart's NatureWatch Prize (Tallis Section) with a small poem about rising sealevels in Vanuatu. The prize is for the poem to be set to music-for-choir. See their website for beautifully presented prize-winning poems.

3. Won the 'Black in White' Poetry Prize with a poem called 'The Girl from Niue'. Competition book to be published. See their website.

4. PNReview No.282 now out: with 'Mondo de Politiko' - my translations of short poems from around the world PLUS 'Fleurs', a poem written in memoriam for Fleur Adcock. 

5. Check out the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project: a little blog about my biking round South Holland ... called 'South Holland Shush' - & soon a Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined book of the project with 3 of my poems, plus some booklaunch-readings to come in Boston & Nottingham - see South Holland Shush – Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project

6. Busy co-editing, with Vaughan Rapatahana, a volume of Aotearoa/NZ ex-pat, 'otherwheres' poets/poetry to be called 'Te Pūrere'/'The Exodus'. We have a final collection, with thanks to the many expat Aotearoa/NZ poets who have responded, and are juggling up an Introduction. Permissions and biogs now sorted.

7. Just completed the translation of all available Hans Davidsohn (Jakob van Hoddis) poems. Around 50 in all, and mostly tellingly short (mostly). The poet was murdered in Belzec in 1942, aged 55 ('vanHoddis' a sensible safety-first anagram of 'Davidsohn').

8. Commissioned by the Beverley Festival (September) to work with composer David Knotts to turn my 'Alphabet of Ugly Animals' into a Prom Event. Hard at it - an Intro and Endpiece needed. There will be about 8/10 of the 26 Animals/Poems set to/accomanied by David's fab music.  

9. A wonderful review in the Times Literary Supplement of my & bro's 'Petrus Borel: Rhapsodies 1831' translation/book (Carcanet) - 'rivals the original' and 'a reliquary of gems'. Available to read online at the TLS website. Book can be bought at www.carcanet.co.uk

10. Work in Progress:

* 'The Alphabet of Ugly Animals' Intro and Endpiece for the Beverley Festival Prom. 

 *some translating of Boris Vian poems, fresh, jazzy, informal and cool.

*up and coming Romanian translations courtesy of Cris Constantinescu.

*a revamp of 'Bush Bastards', my only novel, just completed, and with a New York lit. agent. Fingers not entirely hopefully crossed. 

Complete Book List

Practical Anarchy (Carcanet)

Flying Carpets Over Filbert Street (Carcanet)

Grrrrr (Carcanet)

Resistance is Futile (Carcanet)

The Ballad of Robin Hood and the Deer (Agraphia Press), pictures by Clifford Harper

The Ballad of Santo Caserio (Agraphia Press), pictures by Clifford Harper

The Song Atlas (Carcanet)

Star City (Carcanet)

The Book with Twelve Tales (Carcanet)

Fucking Poets (3 vols) (Cold Hub Press NZ)

40 Lies (Carcanet) pictures by Sarah Kirby

Fresh Air & The Story of Molecule (Carcanet)

52 Euros (Carcanet)

Pacifictions (Cold Hub Press NZ)

Mad John's Walk (Five Leaves : Occasional Pamphlets) January 2017

The Little Sublime Comedy (Carcanet) 2018

17 Very Pacific Poems (Indigo Dreams) 2019

The Blood Book (Gerolstein Press)

The Gnawing Flood (Cerasus Publishing) 2021

The Extasie (Carcanet) 2021

Amado Nervo: Poems of Faith & Doubt (SLG Press, Oxford) 2021

Aotearoa/Angleland: 30+30 tankas (New Walk Editions) 2021

Petrus Borel 'Rhapsodies', translated from the French by John & Kurt Gallas (Carcanet Classics)

The High Roof of Heaven (Anglo-Saxon poems transl. JG) (SLG Press, Oxford) 2022

Where Grace Grows Ever Green (Middle English poems transl.ed JG) SLG Press, Oxford) 2022

17 Paper Resurrections (from graveyards in mid-Wales: picture-poems) (Dempsey & Windle 2022)

Drops in the Sea of Time: Poetry of Woman & God (SLG Press, Oxford 2022)

Fly Not Too High: Holy Sonnets of Gabrielle de Coignard & Vittoria Colonna (SLG 2022)

This Far Place: poems of Gabriela Mistral (SLG 2023)

Touchpapers (SLG 2023) Contemplative Poetry series No.11 (SLG 2023)

The Poems of Reinhard Sorge (SLG 2024)

Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: The Complete Works (Carcanet) - October/.November 2024

* Te Pūrere (The Exodus: an anthology of expat Aotearoa/NZ poets/poems. 2025 (Cold Hub NZ)

Contacts

John Gallas Poetry www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk

Carcanet Press www.carcanet.co.uk

Carcanet blog www.carcanetblog.blogspot.co.uk

John Gallas Facebook

Cold Hub Press (NZ) www.coldhubpress.co.nz

New Walk Editions www.newwalkmagazine.com

Five Leaves publishing/bookshop (Mad John's Walk) www.fiveleaves.co.uk

Agraphia / Clifford Harper www.agraphia.co.uk

YouTube (Paterau Sonnent / The Blobfish Sings Under the Sea)

STAND Magazine www.standmagazine.org

Indigo Dreams publishing www.indigodreams.co.uk

Spinoff (NZ) www.thespinoff.co.nz

The John Clare Project www.brookes.ac.uk/the-meeting

The Sutton Hoo Ship Build (Sponsor that Rivet) www.saxonship.org

SLG Press (Series of Contemplative Poetry) www.slgpress.co.uk

Dempsey & Windle, publishers of '17 Paper Resurrections' www.dempseyandwindle.com

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