In her debut collection, Even the Trees, Roshni Gallagher asks what can be seen, named, or remembered. From Scotland to Guyana, the poems explore the porous boundary between the past and the present, and how ecological landscapes and landscapes of the mind and body are permanently altered by migration and memory. The elegiac series of poems Kala Pani reflects on the history and legacy of Indian indentured labourers in the Caribbean. Following the experience of women in the moment of rupture as they cross the ocean, these poems hover at the border of what is known and unknown. Other poems navigate stories from Gallagher's mixed heritage, from the Windrush generation to the sod houses in Ireland. She explores the tension between historical and personal silence - what can and can't be spoken about. But stories are retained in the objects around us, from a pair of earrings made from stolen gold to a painting of a waterfall in the childhood home. The poems look through windows, emerge from darkness, and traverse spaces 'on the edge of things' where land gives way to water. Seeing and being seen are often painful, yet there is beauty, healing, and connection in what we choose to give our attention to.

About the Author

Roshni Gallagher is a poet and librarian from Leeds of mixed Indo-Guyanese and Irish heritage. She lives in Edinburgh. She has received an Edwin Morgan Poetry Award (2022) and a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award (2022), and was joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize in 2024. Her pamphlet Bird Cherry was published by VERVE Poetry Press in 2023, and her first book-length collection, Even the Trees, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2026. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary publications including Best Scottish Poems, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Irish Pages and Magma. She has an MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of St Andrews.

Reviews

What impresses me most about this debut collection is its honouring of our humanity, the naming of ordinary people with extraordinary lives. The Kala Pani sequence epitomises this: poignant, exquisite and haunting. Roshni Gallagher's poems are so visceral, so perceptive, so adept in their use of echoes and white space, they will, to quote her, make you 'vigilant when you walk down a street'.

-- Patience Agbabi

Intelligent, searching, and beautifully written, Roshni Gallagher's Even the Trees is an exceptional debut collection, full of enviable phrasing and insight. It's wonderful to find a new poet whose work you know you will continue to follow.

-- Karen Solie



Book Information
ISBN 9781780377766
Author Roshni Gallagher
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 8mm