Tag Archives: Carcanet

Anzac Day, 25 April: John Gallas, ‘Anzac Snap’

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‘The soldier is F. Come (NZ), to be killed soon after on the crest of Chunuk Bayir.’

Churchill sat in a smoky chair
and watched the London rain:
We’ll chase the Turks to Hell, he said,
and chase them back again.

The Beautiful Battalions sailed
under a seething sky:
they landed at Gallipoli
to do his work and die.

We’ll be in Consty-nobble soon
and drinking pink champagne,
and then we’ll get our medals, boys,
and sail back home again.

But X was full of dying men
and Y was full of dead,
and Heaven, boys, was full of shells
that whistled overhead.

O Johnny Turk keeps shooting, boys,
so keep your heads down low:
we’ll be in Consty-nobble soon,
cos Churchill tells us so.

I just stood up to see the sea.
It’s quiet, boys, I said,
and something whistled through the sky
and hit me in the head.

The farm is still at Paterau,
the sheep graze by the sea,
and men ride up and down the bush
who’ve never heard of me.

O History is made by men
with nothing else to do.
They watch the rain, and have ideas
to try on me and you.

But glory isn’t Names and Noise,
it isn’t Arms and Men:
it’s living out the little life
I’ll never live again.

*****

John Gallas writes: “A ballad for the Aotearoa/NZ dead at Gallipoli (Gelibolu). The epigraph is a photo caption from a book that, along with the accompanying picture of F. Come, set me writing. In common with lots of Australian/NZ commentaries (eg. Peter Weir’s film ‘Gallipoli’) it is less than complimentary about the Top Brass, and attempts to represent the soldiers themselves as people from farms and towns who would never come back. Gallipoli remains a potent historical event to NZers: the debate between splendid sacrifice vs foolish waste, world solidarity vs nothing-to-do-with-us, significance vs time-to-forget-it is ongoing. 

“The Blue and Red Pencil drawing by David Barker (Gallipoli, 1915) represents an anonymous ‘cheery’ EnZed soldier. Like Come, he never got back to his farm; he was “At the landing, and here ever since”. The drawing is on p.53 of my collection ‘Star City‘, from which this poem is taken.”

*****

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.  

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Mol Sonnet’

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a man will cross the world at the smallest hope of love

Beep. Wrrrr. Clickclack. Ssssss. ‘Hello?’
Ssssss. Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘It’s’ – crackle – ‘Geet.’
Crackle. ‘We could’ – buzzzzz. Ssssss – ‘meet.’
Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘If’ – crackle crackle – ‘Joe?’
Umm. ‘I’mchangingtrainsatLeuvenstation
halfpastfiveonTuesdaymorning’bye.’
Clickclack. Beep. The Monday midnight sky
shuddered like a fridge. Our conversation
never matched our love. Too pissed to drive,
I took my bike. The roads were swiped with ice.
It snowed. My front teeth froze. I fell off twice.
‘The next train‘ – Jesus! Push me! – ‘to arrive…‘
We met – still moving. ‘Kiss me!’ That was it.
I biked back home to Mol. The sun shone. Shit.

*****

John Gallas writes: “Romantic Love called upon to go out in the cold on a bike to resurrect its glories, which may never quite have been what they are remembered as. I enjoyed the stop-start challenge of the expression of hesitation, and of producing punctuation of indecision and effort. Perhaps the last word, far from being annoyance, hints at sadness.”

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.  

Photo: “OuderAmstel” by Markus Keuter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

John Gallas ‘A Comforting Sonnet’

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‘Caring means a whole new world’ – Croatian Proverb

Rosa Horvat’s hound attacked my legs.
My toes went green. I had a dizzy fit.
They took me to the hospital in Split.
The wards were all full up, so Uncle Dregs
sat by my trolley till he went to work,
then Erno, who’s my mum’s half-brother’s son,
pushed me up and down the hall for fun,
until his grandad’s nephew, who’s a Turk,
came and told me jokes. I wet the bed.
Then someone in a helmet held my hand
and sang a song I couldn’t understand.
Then it was morning, and I wasn’t dead.

I’m home now. Hvala vam if you were there.
Or not. Or sometimes. Friends are everywhere.

*****

Hvala vam – thank you all (Croatian)

John Gallas writes: “As with Camaguey – same collection, the proverb this time being as the little epigraph says. I particularly wanted here a certain tone: I am not a my-thoughts/my-feelings/interesting me sort of poet, and write mostly objective tales, descriptions, experiences that contain anything ‘I’ might want to say. A firm believer in show-not-tell.
“This one has won a couple of prizes: I regularly enter competitions, testing my poems anonymously before judges from The Cats’ League to National Poetry Society. This one won the ‘Caring’ section of a national competition. They liked the ‘humour-and-kindness’ of it all – which pleased me, as that was exactly the tone-intention.
“Wee note: I often set poems – I have travelled much – in various lands and cultures: I have been in trouble for this (my Maori friend, Vaughan Rapatahana, just said ‘Don’t’ when I embarked on some Pacific Island tales-in-verse) but as a Man With No Culture (white NZer?) I feel free to roam, creatively, as long as certain sensitivities are observed. (I have a complex theory as to objection/offence as far as cultures go, but I’ll leave that for now). ‘The Song Atlas’, my best-selling Carcanet book, was a translation of one poem from every country in the world.”

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see http://www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire.
Website is http://www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.

Photo: John Gallas, Carcanet official photo