John Gallas Poetry

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

(Spinoff)

Poem for February 2025

(this tanka is from 'Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: The Complete Works'

available from all good bookshops & from www.carcanet.co.uk)

*

love at the pictures

So I will go to

The Night of the Living Dead

and contemplate the

back of your head in the dark

and drop peanuts at your feet.

*

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.281 now out: with 'Mondo de Katastrofoj' - my translations of short poems from around the world. Next set, 'Mondo de Politiko', proofed and ready for PNReview 282.

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. My translation of Reinhard Sorge's (1892-1916) complete poems has just come out from SLG Press, Oxford. www.slgpress.co.uk for contact/orders/buying.

9. A fab & 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:

*'Fork Flats', a group of 46 poems that, upon reading, build up into a picture of an 'otherwise' society, a kind of jigsaw-puzzle for the reader

*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, thanks to Dr Alistair Fox, who liked it so much he made it into an e-book fit to be sent to agents/publishers.

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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