John Gallas Poetry

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Mmm ...:
"Our closest dreams are less than the hearts that make them" - 'At the Funeral of a Nationalist'

mother Vulture

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

poem for September 2020

Wilderfears

a passing shadow does not make eternal night – Bosnian proverb

The forest flapped. Biff … boff … thud :

pinecones bombed the mud. Amidst the gloom

hunched in creaking ever-darks, a doom

of Mother Vultures phlegmed their raddled cud

and rocked, with hooded joy, their snapping eggs.

Something dimmed the wind. The mothers wound

their necks erect and hissed. It swooped around

the treetops. Hide your babies ! Tiny legs

stabbed the shelltops. Something sliced the sky.

Mother Air-steak stropped her claws. The others

blinked. The wind died down. The gargling mothers

cranked their wings across their ogled fry.

A lone balloonist drifted down the hill

towards the town : and all the woods fell still.

What's Afoot ? Top Ten

1. Due out from Carcanet January 2021 : my and bro's translation of Petrus Borel's 'Rhapsodies' (1868). To be a 'Carcanet Classic'.

2. Due out from Carcanet May/June 2021 : my book of love poems, 'The Extasie'.

3. The tanka collection, 'Here They Come ! 200 Tankas Delivering Goodness Straight to your Doorstep' is to be published by New Walk Editions (Leicester University) probably Winter 2021.

4. Bronze Medal in the Cerasus Poetry Olympics 2020. This means another book. Perhaps the Anti-Colonial collection of 27 poem-prints.

5. THIS COULD BE THE YEAR OF FOUR BOOKS. Struth.

6. 'The Long Poem Magazine' bravely to publish my and bro's translation of Jean Genet's 11page poem 'Fisherman : Le Suquet' in Issue 24. Wild maaaaan.

7. Third prize in the Welsh Poetry Competition, with 'Unscythed'. A cheque to spend when I can go to a bloody shop.

8. Lockdown Task Completed : 'Not Fade Away' - complete gravestone/graveyard rhymes of 16 NW Leicestershire churches collected, recorded and filed. Offering copies of each set to each church.

9. The John Clare Project is now online at Oxford Brookes University website : https://www.artsteps.com/view/5eb9214cc993b042cb8ac91b

10. Saxon Ship Project in Lockdown : please see the newsletter of you are signed up. www.saxonship.org

Complete Book List - we have reached 22 !

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)