John Gallas Poetry

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Mmm ...:
"Night is nothing new" - 'Mower on Mardin Gate'

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

Poem for May 2022

No.11 from '17 Paper Resurrections'

this prize-winning book (see cover picture at the bottom of this webpage)

is available to buy at £8 from www.dempseyandwindle.com from 1st May 2022

or by contacting JG at john.gallas@btinternet.com

or by going to 'John Gallas 17 Paper Resurrections' on ebay

each of the 17 poems has an accompanying computer-art illustration.

The poems are based on real graveyard/church inscriptions in mid-Wales

and bring gently back to life the folks memorialized.

It is a beautiful book: thanks, D&W!

11. Eleanor Charlotte Lloyd

d. February 9^th 1840 aged 9 weeks, daughter of John & Eleanor Lloyd, Drapers. Corris

The Saints leaned out on their bars of glass.

Something at five o’clock.

Is it a bird ? said Irene of Antioch.

Is it an aero-plane ?

rowing ever upwards in a salvo of talc

trailing, thus, tucked swaddles

of finest muslin and lawn

both voluminous and long ?

carefully trimmed with sails of satin

and stitchings of treadled lace

and a calling-card

for the Drapers’ at Llanbardan Road

pinned to its baby breast ?

Nay, said St Florence of Garreg Ddu,

as the bundle shot out of the void,

it is little Eleanor Charlotte Lloyd.

What's Afoot?

The Maker's Dozen

1. Won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Poetry Prize. Book now published: '17 Paper Resurrections', poems from graveyard inscriptions collected when biking about mid-Wales - with a computer-art picture, made by JG, on each poem's facing page.

2. Just launched: Petrus Borel 'Rhapsodies 1831' by Carcanet Classics. Buy at www.carcanet.co.uk Zoom launch available to watch on youtube, link below: readings of Borel's poems, discussion and Q&A. A 'blistering' book, an engrossing event! https://youtu.be/8Fc_X6qy5jY

3. The 2nd and 3rd volumes of the 'Contemplative Poetry' series, 'The High Roof of Heaven' (translations by JG of Anglo-Saxon poetry), and 'Where Grace Grows Ever Green' (Middle English poems edited/translated by JG) are now available from SLG Press (orders@slgpress.co.uk)

4. 'Aotearoa/Angleland' - 30+30 tankas, a beautifully done pamphlet, out now. Buy at www.newwalkmagazine.com: an edited video of the Zoom launch/reading (with Belinda Rimmer, 'Holding On') is available to watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL3pXHGReqE

5. Won the Corsham Story-Telling Poetry Competition with 'Fingers Farooqi paints a story on the town wall'. Zoom for the Event & Reading available online. Look out for Radio reading (half an hour) by JG in association with that prize on Huntingdon Community Radio.

6. Won the Parkinsons Art Poet of the Year with a wonky sonnet in praise of Emma Goldman's invention of the Anarchist Hop ('If you can't dance, I don't want to join your revolution'). Read the poem/award at https://parkinsons.art/poetrycomp

7. Prizewinner in the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Fest: a desert sonnet ('Umm Lahayi'). Booklet published, and now available from Manchester Cathedral online.

8. 'The Extasie', 64 love poems, now out, with its wonderful cover - and contents, of course. Available to buy at all good bookshops, or order from Amazon and/or www.carcanet.co.uk

***** it is ...

A SUNDAY TIMES SUMMER READ RECOMMENDATION (see also Financial Times Literary Supplement) and a fab review from 'coffeetime' ('love poetry at its best') - read at https://coffee-time-reviews.com/2021/11/19/why-the-extasie-is-love-poetry-at-its-best/

9. 'Meet the Author' is now on the Carcanet blog : https://carcanetblog.blogspot.com/2021/04/john-gallas-extasie.html

10. 'The Gnawing Flood', a book of 28 anti-colonial poem-prints now out from brave and exciting Cerasus Publishing. Order @ The Gnawing Flood: Amazon.co.uk: Gallas, John: 9798592286063: Books

11. My SaxonShip Project 'anglo-saxon' poems and riddles are all available at www.saxonship.org under 'Saxonship Poet: John Gallas'. Sign up, sponsor a rivet, and be a part of the great enterprise.

12. Work in progress: completed opera libretto for composer Alasdair Nicolson based on the middle-Scots poem 'The Buke of the Howlat'. Translations of the holy sonnets of Vittoria diColonna & Gabrielle deCoignard for SLG Publishing now complete. Having a rest before tackling 'Fork Flats', a mysterious place with a mysterious mission ...

13. 8 'shipdreams', tankas for the Sutton Hoo Saxonship Project (www.saxonship.org) - poems with pictures - will soon be online-published by the wonderful Otolith mag: link to Otolith's '8 Shipdreams for Saxonship' (www.saxonship.org) https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2022/03/john-gallas.html

Complete Book List - we have reached 28 ...

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