Just Arrived: “Shift” by Rhian Gallagher
On Tuesday 23 August, as editor on the Tuesday Poem Hub, I featured Rhian Gallagher’s poem, Butterfly, from her new collection Shift, which is being published by both Auckland University Press, here in NZ, and Enitharmon in the UK.
You can read Butterfly here.
Yesterday, I received my own copy of Shift in the post—and am very much looking forward to getting in amongst this new collection of Rhian Gallagher’s poetry. I hope to tell you more about it soon, but in the meantime, here’s what the back cover says:
“Rhian Gallagher’s second collection encompasses a departure from London, where she lived for eighteen years, and a return to the pines and paddocks of the South Island. This mid-life shift involves acts of retrieval, confrontations with loss and movements towards renewal: ‘Belonging was always touch / touch and go.’ At the heart of the book is an intimate testament to a relationship – sensual, direct, contradictory – celebrating the evolution of deep connection between two women. Meditative, at times urgent, this evocative collection will earn Rhian Gallagher a well-deserved place in the New Zealand poetic landscape.”
In addition to Butterfly, you can read another poem from Shift, Lagoon, on Helen Heath’s blog, here.
I love both of those poems. She has some wonderful lines in her work.
Wen, I have read the first 5 in the collection now and found them all superb. So far, I’m loving Shift.