Bill Manhire called Rhian Gallagher’s frst poetry collection Shift ‘one of the quiet, astonishing secrets of New Zealand writing’ and the book went on to win the New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry in 2012

Gallagher’s new book, Far-Flung, is personal (her father and her Irish ancestry), it is about place (Dunedin, country halls) and it fnishes with a powerful group of poems focused around a the poor, Irish immigrants to Dunedin who ended up out in Seaclif Asylum.

Author Biography:

Rhian Gallagher’s frst poetry book, Salt Water Creek , was published in London
(Enitharmon Press, 2003) and short-listed for the Forward Prize for First Collection.
In 2007 Gallagher won a Canterbury History Foundation Award which led to the
publication of her book, Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson.
She also received the 2008 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. Gallagher’s Shift
won the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry. In 2018, Gallagher held the
University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship.