Poetry and
Gary Galsworth
As of 2024, Gary has written and published four books of poems. The first collection, “Yes Yes,” was released in 2010. But he had been writing for many years before then. In fact, it was nearly 35 years after he started that he showed a few of his then hundreds of poems to his sister and some close friends. As he writes in the preface of “Yes Yes:”
Poetry was just something I did, as the poems came to me. They added up, and I started sharing them with a good friend here and there. One of those friends surprised me when she said, “Gar, consider taking your poems more seriously. Not because they are very good, exceptional or prescient. Don’t worry about that stuff. It’s out of our hands. We just do the best we can. Show up for them because you have lived a diverse and engaged life and have something to say worth sharing.”
And so I officially gave recognition to a path I was already on. Accepted and embraced it. I found writing down a poem an intriguing play. They come my way and we engage, an ensemble. My job—stay available and allow them to find their shape and direction in language.
Ironically, getting myself out of the way has a lot to do with letting that happen. I don’t want to mislead you into excessive serendipity.
Some poems show up like leaves floating by on a stream, but others will not go unheard. They break the surface with the energy and determination of a dolphin or a leopard seal.
Out of original ground, nurtured and conditioned, they still retain a mind and journey of their own.
In 2016, he released his second book of poems, Beyond the Wire. In 2020, Nothing Itself, his third collection, became available. And in 2024, his fourth collection of poems, The Mole Penthouse, was released. Each book contains over 100 splendid poems and a selection of short stories.
Gary Galsworth is now working on his fifth volume, “Nothing Worked … Except Love.”
His poems are regularly featured in the Alexandria Quarterly, Bittersweet Magazine, Broad River Review, Contemporary Expressions, Mainstreet Rag, Pennsylvania English, Pioneertown, Poydras Review, and many other journals. He is often invited to read his poems at conferences and festivals.
Click here to contact Gary. Thanks.
What Reviewers Say
Praise for Yes Yes. “The reader will discover in this collection beautiful contemplative poems. Gary Galsworth holds the still center while the cascading events of time find definition in a poet’s moving language.”
— Dr. Kathryn Kimball, author of Finding John Keats & Coleridge’s Dreaming Mind
Praise for Beyond the Wire. “Gary Galsworth has had about ten lifetimes worth of adventures and misadventures. In this collection, he writes frankly and with palpable feeling about those experiences. Romance, blood ties, death, tea, violence, the closeness of nature—Galsworth lays out his themes with equal parts of grit and heart.”
— Justin Millan, Poet and Author
Praise for Nothing Itself. “I love these poems … so personal, generous, and human. Just what I need. I find comfort in their joy, humor, and acceptance.”
— Barbara Curry Mulcahy, Poet and Author
Praise for The Mole Penthouse. “Sometimes poetry flows unimpeded from the bottom of the author’s heart. This is the case with Gary Galsworth, and we value him the most for this brutal honesty, for letting us gaze into his inner feelings and see ours reflected as in a looking glass.”
— Esther Aguilera, Poet, Madrid