Can the Dandelions be Trusted?

About Katherine Gallagher

Katherine Gallagher was born in Maldon Victoria in 1935 graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1963 and taught in Melbourne for five years before moving to Europe living first in London and then in Paris for nine years. In 1979 she moved back to London working as a secondary teacher and after 1990 as a poetry tutor for the Open College of the Arts Jackson's Lane Barnet College and Torriano London. During this time she co-edited Poetry London as well as working extensively with primary school children. She has poems in over forty-five children's anthologies. In 1978 she was awarded a New Writer's Fellowship from the Literature Board Australia Council and in 1981 she won the Brisbane Warana Poetry Prize. Her book Passengers to the City (Hale & Iremonger Sydney 1985) was shortlisted for the John Bray National Poetry Award. In 1987 she was one of the five poets representing Australia at the Struga International Poetry Festival. Her second book Fish-rings on Water was published by Forest Books London and introduced by Peter Porter. In 1994 her translation from French of Jean-Jacques Celly's poems The Sleepwalker with Eyes of Clay introduced by Peter Florence was published by Forest Books. In 2000 her third full collection Tigers on the Silk Road was published by Arc Publications and she was awarded a Royal Literary Fund Award. In 2005 Vagabond Books Sydney published her chapbook After Kandinsky in their 'Rare Object Series'. In 2006 Arc Publications published her fourth collection Circus-Apprentice and in 2010 Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems. From 2002-8 she was Education Officer for Writers Inc and from July-October 2002 Writer in Residence at Railway Fields Nature Reserve Harringay London. In 2008 she received a London Society of Authors' Foundation Award. Her poems were featured on the A.B.C's POETICA programme Radio National in June 2009; the programme was repeated two years later. In 2012 she represented Australia as a Parnassus Poet at the Derry Tall Ships' Homecoming Celebrations Northern Ireland. . In November 2012 Carol Rumens chose her poem 'The Year of the Tree' for the Guardian blog's Poem of the Week and in 2015 Andrew Spicer made it into a film featuring Molly Byrne and presented on Vimeo. She has read her poetry at festivals and universities in the UK Australia Ireland Germany Italy and France and her poems have been translated into French German Hebrew Italian Romanian and Serbo-Croat.