Rhian Gallagher was born in the South Island of New Zealand. She lived in London for 18 years and returned to New Zealand in 2006. Gallagher’s first collection, Salt Water Creek, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for First Collection in 2003. She received a Canterbury History Foundation grant (NZ) in 2007. Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson was published by the South Canterbury Museum, NZ, 2010.
New Zealand, London, Brooklyn, Venice... as a relationship unfolds across continents, Shift follows. In Rhian Gallagher’s second collection she beautifully evokes a long-distance love affair as it blooms and ages, alongside the estrangement and joy of a life lived beyond national boundaries. In the three sections of Shift, home, love and self are each explored in a different poetic style, each given a chance to live freely, for 'Giving up on words is the final failure'.
"Originality in some poets entails difficulty, but Gallagher’s writing, unusual both in matter and manner, is never obscurely self-reflexive: it is both original and beautifully clear."
—Carol Rumens
Enitharmon / Dufour Editions
