Rhian Gallagher's first poetry collection Salt Water Creek (Enitharmon Press, 2003) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for First Collection. In 2008 she received the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. Her second collection Shift, (Auckland University Press 2011, Enitharmon Press, UK, 2012) won the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry. Gallagher's most recent work Freda: Freda Du Faur, Southern Alps, 1909-1913 was produced in collaboration with printer Sarah M. Smith and printmaker Lynn Taylor (Otakou Press 2016). Rhian held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 2018.

Rhian Gallagher

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It's Strange the Way that Memory

loses laughter, dilutes the larger part
of joy and play
and bends the truth of wonder
yet never hesitates, at 3am,
to detail and exact
the hardest time, the roughest weather
our worst fight ever, the jolts
of fear.