John Gallas

John Edward Gallas FEA (born 11 January 1950) is a New Zealand born poet who in 2016 was the Joint Winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize and the St Magnus International Festival poet.

Biography Gallas was born in Wellington in New Zealand and is of Austrian descent, the son of Frederick, né Fritz Eduard Gänzl, an educator, and Nancy Gallas, née Agnes Ada Welsh. He is the younger brother of the historian and writer Kurt Gänzl. He attended the University of Otago in his native New Zealand, and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford to study Medieval English Literature and Old Icelandic A review of Gallas's The Extasie (2021) by Maria Crawford of The Financial Times said, "New Zealand-born, UK-based Gallas fills his 12th Carcanet collection with resounding echoes of John Donne, Thomas Wyatt and John Clare. In a series of love poems set against the patterns of the English landscape, [Gallas] applies a modern-day directness to lyrical expressions of intimacy." His translation of twenty-five poems by Amado Nervo, Poems of Faith and Doubt, was also published in 2021 and was followed by a number of anthologies and translations of sacred poetry with the same publisher. Over the years he has worked with his brother Kurt Gänzl on translations of Baudelaire, Verhaeren, Materlinck, Yourcenar, Anna de Noailles, Nerval, Florian and Borel, among others.

Gallas is a Fellow of the English Association, won the International Welsh Poetry Competition in 2009, was the Joint Winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize in 2016 and was the St Magnus Festival poet in Orkney in the same year. and in 2022 was awarded the National Poetry Library's Brian Dempsey Memorial Poetry Prize, which led to the publication of his collection 17 Paper Resurrections.

List of books by Gallas 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, New Zealand) 40 Lies (Carcanet) pictures by Sarah Kirby Fresh Air & The Story of Molecule (Carcanet) 52 Euros (Carcanet) Pacifictions (Cold Hub Press, New Zealand) The Alphabet of Ugly Animals (Magpie Press) Mad John's Walk (Five Leaves : Occasional Pamphlets) January 2017 The Little Sublime Comedy (Carcanet) 17 Very Pacific Poems (Indigo Dreams) The Blood Book Gerolstein Press, New Zealand (2018) The Extasie (Carcanet) 2021 The Gnawing Flood (Cerasus Press 2021) Amado Nervo, Poems of Faith and Doubt (Oxford: SLG Press, 2021), collected and translated Where Grace Grows Ever Green: Middle English Lyrics (Oxford: SLG Press, 2021), collected and translated The High Roof of Heaven (Oxford: SLG Press, 2022), collected and translated Petrus Borel: Rhapsodies 1931, translated from the French by John Gallas and Kurt Gänzl, (Carcanet Classics) 2022 17 Paper Resurrections (Dempsey & Windle) 2022 Drops in the Sea of Time: Women & God (Oxford: SLG Press, 2022), collected and translated Fly Not Too High: Gabrielle de Coignard & Vittoria Colonna (Oxford: SLG Press, 2022), collected and translated This Far Place: Gabriela Mistral (Oxford: SLG Press, 2023), collected and translated Touchpapers (Oxford: SLG Press, 2023), collected and translated Reinhard Sorge, Take Flight to God (Oxford: SLG Press, 2024), translated from German The Alphabet of Ugly Animals (Cerasus) – forthcoming Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: The Complete Works (Carcanet 2024) Vernon Lyrics: The Steadfast Throne of Three, translated from Middle English (Oxford: SLG Press, 2025)