John Barnie

Last updated

John Barnie (born 1941) [1] is a Welsh poet, essayist and editor, who was born in Abergavenny. [2]

He was a lecturer in the University of Copenhagen from 1969 until 1982. Following his return to Wales he was appointed assistant editor of the magazine Planet: The Welsh Internationalist and took over as editor in 1990 until 2006. He is a prolific poet with collections from various presses, most recently Cinnamon Press [3] and won an Arts Council of Wales Prize for Literature in 1990 with his essay collection The King of Ashes. A more recent project [4] with the Oxford Museum of Natural History based on his A Report to Alpha Centauri [5] focuses on his concern for nature and environmental issues.

Reviewers of his work have noted his interest in paleoanthropology and his pessimism about the evolutionary path taken by humans. [6] But they have also identified a wry humour in the presentation of this theme in his poetry [7] and a counter to an apparently misanthropic stance in his positive affirmation of the natural world, an ambivalence, in the words of one reviewer "that adds, rather than subtracts", from the experience of reading his work [8] while another has commented on his sense of the Earth as an inhuman place in spite of our certainty of our place in it [9] and. [10]

According to The Poetry Book Society, "Barnie's poetry shines an uncomfortable light onto issues of ecological degradation, mass extinction and mortality, yet remains lyrical and wry". [11]

His work is discussed in an interview for Sustainable Wales [12] with Robert Minhinnick.

He is also a musician with the blues band, Hollow Log. [13]

A volume of tributes to him from fellow poets, artists, musicians and critics, Wired to the Dynamo, [14] was published in 2018.

Publications

Academic

Essays

Fiction

Autobiographical

On blues music (in Welsh)

Poetry

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abergavenny</span> Market town in Monmouthshire, Wales

Abergavenny is a market town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. Abergavenny is promoted as a Gateway to Wales; it is approximately 6 miles (10 km) from the border with England and is located where the A40 trunk road and the recently upgraded A465 Heads of the Valleys road meet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Welsh literature in English</span>

Welsh writing in English, is a term used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Finch (poet)</span> Welsh writer

Peter Finch is a Welsh author, psychogeographer and poet living in Cardiff, Wales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monmouthshire</span> County in Wales

Monmouthshire is a county in the south east of Wales. It borders Powys to the north; the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the north and east; the Severn Estuary to the south, and Torfaen, Newport and Blaenau Gwent to the west. The largest town is Abergavenny, and the administrative centre is Usk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owen Sheers</span> Welsh poet, author, playwright and Television presenter

Owen Sheers is a Welsh poet, author, playwright and television presenter. He was the first writer in residence to be appointed by any national rugby union team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Eisteddfod of Wales</span> Annual festival of Welsh-language culture

The National Eisteddfod of Wales is the largest of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales. Its eight days of competitions and performances are considered the largest music and poetry festival in Europe. Competitors typically number 6,000 or more, and overall attendance generally exceeds 100,000 visitors, the highest recently being 118,000 attending the 2022 festival. The 2018 Eisteddfod was held in Cardiff Bay with a fence-free 'Maes'. In 2020, the event was held virtually under the name AmGen; events were held over a one-week period.

Seren Books is the trading name of Poetry Wales Press, an independent publisher based in Bridgend, Wales, specialising in English-language writing from Wales and also publishing other literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Seren's aim is to bring Welsh literature and culture to a wider audience. The press takes its name from the Welsh word for "star".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Jenkins</span> Anglo-Welsh poet

Nigel Jenkins was an Anglo-Welsh poet. He was an editor, journalist, psychogeographer, broadcaster and writer of creative non-fiction, as well as being a lecturer at Swansea University and director of the creative writing programme there.

Tony Curtis FRSL is a Welsh poet who writes in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Welsh-language literature</span>

Welsh-language literature has been produced continuously since the emergence of Welsh from Brythonic as a distinct language in around the 5th century AD. The earliest Welsh literature was poetry, which was extremely intricate in form from its earliest known examples, a tradition sustained today. Poetry was followed by the first British prose literature in the 11th century. Welsh-language literature has repeatedly played a major part in the self-assertion of Wales and its people. It continues to be held in the highest regard, as evidenced by the size and enthusiasm of the audiences attending the annual National Eisteddfod of Wales, probably the largest amateur arts festival in Europe, which crowns the literary prize winners in a dignified ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Jenkins (poet)</span> Welsh poet (born 1953)

Mike Jenkins is a Welsh poet and fiction writer in English. He is also the father of the Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed and of the journalist Ciaran Jenkins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. S. Thomas</span> Welsh poet and Anglican priest (1913–2000)

Ronald Stuart Thomas, published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year's Turning (1955), the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howell Elvet Lewis</span> Welsh poet and preacher (1860–1953)

Howell Elvet Lewis, widely known by his bardic name Elfed, was a Welsh Congregational minister, hymn-writer, and devotional poet, who served as Archdruid of the National Eisteddfod of Wales from 1924 to 1928.

John Powell Ward is an English poet and academic. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Humanities at Swansea University.

Greg Hill edited The Anglo-Welsh Review, taking over as Reviews Editor in 1980 and becoming the main editor in 1985 until the journal's demise in 1988. He has been involved in a number of other literary projects in Wales, including the journal Materion Dwyieithog/Bilingual Matters, published annually between 1989 and 1992, the results of work done with students at Coleg Ceredigion where he was Head of Humanities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Gregson (poet)</span> English poet

Ian Gregson is an English novelist and poet. His debut poetry collection Call Centre Love Song was shortlisted for a Forward Prize in 2006. In 2015, he was put forward for the position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

The International Welsh Poetry Competition is an annual English language poetry award and the largest of its kind in Wales. The contest was founded in 2007 by Welsh writer, poet and photographer Dave Lewis.

Mari Ellis Dunning is a Welsh writer based in Aberystwyth. Her debut poetry collection Salacia was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year in 2019. She has also published a children's book.

Wiliam Llŷn was a Welsh-language poet whose work largely consists of elegies and praise-poems. He is considered the last major Welsh poet of the bardic tradition, comparable to the greatest late-medieval Welsh poets, and has been called Wales's supreme elegist. Two of his poems are included in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.

References

  1. ↑ "Barnie, John, 1941- - National Library of Wales Archives and Manuscripts". Archives.library.wales. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  2. ↑ "Press, performances, and events - John Barnie Papers". Archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  3. ↑ "Search Results for "John Barnie "". Cinnamonpress.com. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
  4. ↑ "John Barnie". Oumnh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
  5. ↑ Tyrrell, Thomas (2021-11-16). "A Report to Alpha Centauri by John Barnie | Poetry". Wales Arts Review. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
  6. ↑ Gopal Lahiri (18 July 2022). "Poetry Wales 57.3 Spring 2022". Poetry Wales. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  7. ↑ "Poetry, in brief | Book reviews". The Guardian . 2010-05-14. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  8. ↑ Tyrrell, Thomas (2021-11-16). "A Report to Alpha Centauri by John Barnie | Poetry". Wales Arts Review. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  9. ↑ "Matthew Jarvis, 'In/Human Place: The Poetry of John Barnie' - University of Wales".
  10. ↑ Matthew Jarvis In/Human Place Wired to the Dynamo, Cinnamon Press, 2018
  11. ↑ "Sunglasses by John Barnie". Poetrybooks.co.uk.
  12. ↑ "A HAPPY PESSIMIST? AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BARNIE". Sustainablewales.org.uk. 15 November 2016. Retrieved 2022-04-18.
  13. ↑ "Hollow Log | Aberystwyth Arts Centre". Aberystwythartscentre.co.uk (in Welsh). Retrieved 2022-04-18.
  14. ↑ "9781788640046, Wired to the Dynamo - Poetry & Prose in Honour of John Barnie". Gwales.com. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.