Denis Gallagher wrote his first poem as a student at Normanhurst Boys' High School, and recalls that it included the word "shibboleths". His enthusiasm for poetry continued whilst a student at The University of Sydney in the late 1960s, but it wasn't until several years later while sharing a house with
Ken Bolton (q.v.) and
Rae Desmond Jones (q.v. )in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe that he became actively engaged with the writing of poetry, which lead to his first collection,
International Stardom, published by Sea Cruise Books in 1977. He is the author of three other collections of poetry and a contributor to
Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets, edited by
Michael Farrell and
Jill Jones (q.q.v)(2009).
