Billy ‘Nibs’ Buckshot: The Complete Works

This collection of 200 tankas has no Great Purpose, apart from explaining the Meaning of Life. In an firework-display of 31-syllable sparkles, probably set off by accident, it lights up any corner of things done, thought, felt, seen, suffered & enjoyed that it pleases. The writer, barely in control, stands back at a safe distance & watches, mostly with a smile as contradictions abound, ideas morph, and preferences and amusements change.

John Gallas was born in New Zealand in 1950. He came to England in the 1970s to study Old Icelandic at Oxford and has since lived and worked in York, Liverpool, Upholland, Little Ness, Rothwell, Bursa, Leicester, Diyarbakir, Coalville and Markfield, as a bottlewasher, archaeologist, and teacher. His books are published by Cold Hub Press (NZ) and Agraphia (Sweden), and The Extasie was his latest Carcanet collection. He is the editor of two books of translations – 52 Euros and The Song Atlas – also published by Carcanet.