Overview

'Everything is like life' — Mr Omer, David Copperfield This epigraph hovers over The Complete Works as it does over all the astonishing experimental work of the New Zealand poet John Gallas. And by 'everything', he means everything. This collection has no Great Purpose, apart from exploring and expanding upon the contradictory Meanings of Life. In a pyrotechnic display of thirty-one-syllable sparkles, set off by accident and protracted by design, it lights up any corner of things done, thought, felt, seen, suffered and enjoyed. It is contagious: readers begin tankaing as soon as they close the book. A walk in the country will never be the same. Here the writer, barely in control, stands back at a safe distance and watches, mostly with a smile. Here, the reader is the quarry. Contradictions abound, ideas morph, preferences and amusements change – no thoughtful guide is available, but none is needed: crazy and merry variety make this collection amenable to all, especially when all have not quite made up their minds about what on earth is going on. Warning: there are love poems lurking here.

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9781800174436

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Reviews

'[J]ust about the most audacious poet I know. These are the poems Wordsworth would have written if he'd grown up in New Zealand, been a bit more mischievous, and got around England on a bicycle.' - Bill Manhire 'Gallas's restless imagination and exuberant vocabulary bounce us through a variety of locations, moods, landscapes and seasons, from the bush-clad South Island of New Zealand to some distinctly unpredictable spots in the English Midlands.' - Fleur Adcock

Author Information

John Gallas was born in New Zealand in 1950. He came to England in the 1970s to study Old Icelandic at Oxford and has since lived and worked throughout the UK as a bottlewasher, archaeologist, and teacher. His books are published by Cold Hub Press (NZ) and Agraphia (Sweden). The Extasie (2021) was his twelfth Carcanet collection. He also co-translated Rhapsodies 1831 by Petrus Borel, also published by Carcanet. Bill Manhire described him as 'the greatest New Zealand poet no one has ever heard of.' He currently lives in Leicestershire.

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