General comment:
‘Sensitive, imaginative and at ease in either a colloquial or more formal style, Gallagher is especially impressive when she writes of those close to her or of the general human condition where loss, grief or sorrow are conveyed with eloquence and compassion . . .’
From Australian Poets & Their Works: a Reader’s Guide, (ed. William Wilde, O.U.P., 1996)

‘The poems in Katherine Gallagher’s collection . . .have a strong sense of place, most vividly , that of her native Australia. But, perhaps because of this, they are also scrupulously aware of the precarious nature of transition. In each case, the transition is as much mental as physical. And it is in this recognition of becoming, that precariousness most manifests itself . . .This is a strong, attractive collection, with a sure and immediate touch’. (Jan Hewitt, New Welsh Review, Summer ’90. Vol. III, No.1)

‘As a poet, Ms Gallagher endows passionate concerns with the distancing of an intelligence that is almost sardonic in its refusal to expect too much . . . A kind of serene candour about even life’s big moments gives so many of her poems both an originality and an earthiness which is endearing for being so insistently clear-eyed . . .’
(Professor Brian Matthews, Head, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 1993)

a mind
completely at ease except
in one place where undercurrents
break, take over, where
no swimmer would be safe.

‘In this collection we recognise the Silk Road, even if we have not travelled its particular terrain. What are the tigers the reader can expect to meet along the way? Geographical dislocation, the slippage of relationships, political and moral dilemmas, the milestones of life itself. The poet deals with these encounters with assurance, and a lightness of touch that reveals the underlying paradox of her subject matter’. (Margaret Bradstock, Five Bells, Autumn, 2002) .

“Katherine Gallagher . . . has an impressive clarity and freshness of voice. Her poems in this collection are well-honed, musical, and the light touch in her lines betrays multi-layered depths. She writes assuredly of travel, of exile, of return, nature, of war, of family, of illness, of childhood experiences and of love and of death with a measured passion . . .Like Seamus Heaney, she continues to be a proud exponent of the lyric ‘I’, even when, as in Heaney’s Seeing Things, her poetry flies off into a bigger, more philosophical dimension. . . .
In fact, the collection as a whole could be seen as an odyssey through time, continents, memory: although specific to her, anyone’s. The poet expresses this odyssey with surreal originality: ‘I didn’t go round the world. It went around me’.
(Patricia McCarthy, Agenda, Australian Issue, Vol 41, Nos. 1 – 2, 2005).

‘Tigers on the Silk Road is a generous and accomplished collection with a wide range of sympathies and concerns. It spans the curve of Katherine Gallagher’s life in two countries and of her thirty-year journey as a poet. It also makes a specific contribution to Australian poetry in a number of areas: an Irish-Australian country childhood remembered, war poetry; nature poetry; the Australian-European theme.
There is an understated quality to Gallagher’s tone that I think of as characteristically Australian, though life and circumstance have put her in the position of claiming her ground with care, and she does so with assurance . . .Above all, this is a volume of poetry informed by courage and grace’. (Diane Fahey, The Australian Book Review, October, 2001)

‘Brave and watchful . . .’ (Ruth Padel)

“For Katherine Gallagher it is poetry, rather than her native Australia or her adoptive England that is ‘this country you keep coming back to/that walks you home to yourself’. There is much to relish on this ‘walk’: poems of delicate perception and tenderness, the marvellously resonant ‘Laanecoorie’ and the sequence ’After Kandinsky’, the collection’s fascinating, intricate finale.” (Moniza Alvi)

“Gallagher’s poetry appropriates words and makes them the colours and movements of a metaphysical world . . .bewilderingly clear and unpretentious, each poem is a mysterious, scary resurrection of feeling.”(Lidia Vianu. Professor of English, Bucharest University)