Gallaher’s pursuits in poetry yield productive spring with publications, festival appearance

Gallaher's pursuits in poetry yield productive spring with publications, festival appearance

Northwest Missouri State University Professor Dr. John Gallaher loves reading and writing poetry and was an avid writer from an early age - a passion he now uses to help students hone their writing abilities.

"I came across the poets Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein, and my first thought was, 'I don't know what's going on,'" Gallaher said. "Instead of making me hate it, though, that made me really interested. I wanted to know what these people were doing with these words, and I wanted to do that too."

More recently, Gallaher, who joined the Northwest faculty in 2003, has been interested in merging the two worlds of scientific philosophy and poetry to create his work. The result is 11 philosophical poems published this spring, including "Welcome to Everyday Philosophy" in the literary journal Notre Dame Review.

He also was featured this month as one of the literary faces at the Unbound Book festival in Columbia, Missouri. The Unbound Book Festival brings together nationally and internationally recognized authors to talk about their books, work and lives.

He presented excerpts from his book, "My Life in Brutalist Architecture," at the festival and participated in a panel discussion about the intersection of art and architecture. Gallaher's book, published last year, plays on architectural concepts while exploring his experience of being adopted and his journey using DNA research to find his birthmother. When Gallaher was 3 years old, he was adopted by distant relatives due to a death in his family.

"In this book, I am not putting out a program of architecture or how to be an architect, and I'm not actually putting out plans for building, but I am thinking about architecture, and I am talking about some architectural things," Gallaher said. "But it's mostly a metaphor in my mind for the adoption experience."

Though he initially considered art school, Gallaher earned his bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from Texas State University before adding a master's degree there in poetry and eventually completing a Ph.D. in English at Ohio University.

"At the time, 1994, I was looking at either going into entry-level reporting jobs or go to a creative writing master's program," Gallaher said. "Turns out, I hate interviewing people. Well, not that; it's more that I hate interviewing people who don't want to be interviewed. So, I thought I'd get the master's degree and then decide, and what I decided was to get a Ph.D."

Gallaher started writing fan fiction as a teenager and, as time evolved, became interested in reading more obscure forms of poetry. In addition to reading a lot, he draws inspiration from the environment around him, keeping a notebook and jotting things he finds interesting.

He advises his students to read and write frequently, also.

"Let yourself write tons and tons and tons and find things out there you like to read," Gallaher said. "If you're going to enter the world of writing, that means you want someone else to read your work. Well, that means you probably should want to read other people's work too."

At Northwest, Gallaher is the co-editor of The Laurel Review, a biannual literary arts magazine composed of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction and nationally distributed through the University's GreenTower Press. He also is the advisor to Medium Weight Forks, a student-created literary and art magazine. He teaches composition, literature and creative writing courses at the University.

"My writing, as it's almost solely poetry these days - though it seems far away from some of my classes, like general education composition or introduction to literature - isn't nearly as far away as it might appear," Gallaher said. "I'm still thinking of the rhetorical situation and bringing that to classes, and I'm still thinking about the literary tradition as I - in my own small way - hopefully add to it."