The Book with Twelve Tales

John Gallas is a poet from Aotearoa/NZ, born in Wellington in 1950 and presently living near Markfield, Leicestershire, in the UK. HE has published 31 books of poetry, mainly with Carcanet Press. Others include SLG Press Oxford, Dempsey & Windle, Indigo Dreams, Cerasus Publishing, Cold Hub NZ, Five Leaves Editions (Nottingham), New Walk Editions (Leicester), Gerolstein Press (NZ) and Agraphia. His books include 8 poetry translations and a libretto for David Knotts (Toads on a Tapestry) and Alasdair Nicolson (The Iris Murders). He has been Orkney St Magnus Festival Poet; Fellow of the English Association; Saxonship Resident Poet (www.saxonship.org); John Clare ‘The Visit’ poet; multiple prize and award winner (Wells Festival, Reuben Rose International, Welsh Poetry,Manchester Portico Library Prize, Stiwdio Maelor, Bucks Mills, Slipstream, Parkinsons Art, Corsham Story-Telling etc); and is presently co-editor of ‘Te Pūrere’ with Vaughan Rapatahana. Gallas has appeared on BBC Radios 3 and 4 and given readings at the Commonwealth Games (Manchester), QE Hall, Cheltenham, Goldsmiths, Kirkwall, Stromness, Imperial College, Oxford and more. He contributes sets of world poetry translations to PN Review and ‘is presently working on Uncollected/Selected Poems, commissions for the RAF and the Beverley Festival, and collaborations with three composers. He disappears for a chunk of each week to a caravan/bike in Lincolnshire; careens up and down with Leicester City; and is a ‘Don Quixote’, ‘Tristram Shandy’, ‘Tom Jones’, Pamuk, Hardy, Donne, Icelandic Saga, Schnittke, Fellini, Thorvaldsdottir, Randy Newman, Munch, Nolan, Turkey, Pacific islands kind of bloke. Billy ‘Nibs’ Buckshot: The Complete Works (2024) is his fourteenth Carcanet edition.