This selection comprises Kathleen Gallagher’s four books of poetry…
- Tara (Nags Head Press 1987)
- Gypsy (Nags Head Press 1993),
- Twilight Burns The Sky (Doygal Press 2001)
- Kōtuku Shining Flight (Pukeko Publications 2022).
I have seen you at dawn walking, the sun naked at your feet
Kathleen weaves together te ao mauri and her experiences of te ao wairua — giving resonance to the multiple feathers worn by manu kaitiaki Kōtuku. Whether you wade in the foreshore or seek the heights of flight Kathleen’s poetic kōrero will find you whispering ‘āe tika, I understand’. — Te Awhina Arahanga
. . . Exquisite, the work itself is interesting and image laden.
Fiona Kidman, NZ Listener
. . . Invites you into stillness . . . Everything has importance, everything here is holy. — Jillian Sullivan
Spare and lovely as a bird in flight, these poems trace a wide arc in delicate and precise language . . . Never forgets heart.
Frankie McMillan
Buy The Book here
Review by Helen Moran in The Common Good
Kōtuku Shining Flight brings together Kathleen’s four books of beautiful, sensual poetry, rooted in Aotearoa.
This volume is an absolute treasure. Reading from start to finish is a sacred flight, a kind of pilgrimmage:
- Kōtuku (2022) – luminous, compassionately sifting memory and experience for meaning
- Twilight Burns The Sky (2001) passionate, detailed, life events and significant people described with rich, luscious physicality.
- Then Gypsy (1993) the grit, longing and struggle of human experience
- Finally Tara (1979-86) twenty sioc poetic gems, her first collection
Kathleen’s work is robust and tactile, deftly simple and deeply evocative. Through her we see with fresh clarity and a different lens. To read her poetry is to be surprised, to laugh and weep, and to marvel at the preciousness of every ordinary moment, every simple thing, every being. We are challenged to be just. We fall in love with creation, we are reawakened to love
love is aroha
Kathleen gallagher Good friday 2014, Kōtuku
aro – in the presence of
ha – the breath
through all the dimensions
in love
in aroha
we become of God