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Here, Barnie deploys his skills of perception to respond to a group of paintings in Peter Lord’s art collection. These are images that have been familiar to Barnie for years, yet he approaches them with characteristic freshness and humanity. There are no mere descriptions here. Rather, Barnie inhabits the images, speaking from within or engaging with their subjects as a persona just outside the frame. And as he does so, we are taken on a narrative journey, gaining insight into not only how poetry and art interrogate one another, but how each image, peered at ‘through thick cracking varnish’, reveals layers of history and the mores that accrete into hierarchies, prejudices, injustices and the inability to read one another across cultural gaps. The poems in Afterlives reverberate with the ghosts from the pictures, whose roles are still being played out in the divisive echo-chambers of today’s insiders and outsiders. Rich with social commentary, delivered with wit, and sometimes a hint of mischief, there is a serious intent at work here: the voice of those who know ‘whose tragedy they are in’—‘their own’. And who know also that they: ‘will defy anything \/ that gets in their way’.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49607472316689,"sku":"GOR013542039","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51898390184209,"sku":"NGR9781788649254","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1788649257.jpg?v=1750766737"},{"product_id":"footfalls-in-the-silence-a-memoir-book-john-barnie-9781909077287","title":"Footfalls in the Silence - A Memoir","description":"John Barnie wrote of his Abergavenny childhood in the portrait of his father and his world, Tales of the Shopocracy. An altogether different style of memoir, Footfalls in Silence deals with his life up until 1969 when he moved to Denmark to teach. Different, both in form and purpose, it delineates the development of the critic and poet's inner life, revealing how he became a writer and poet, or at least, as Barnie says, 'how I became the poet that I am.' Written with John Barnie's characteristic unsentimental lyricism and sharp visual and linguistic acuity, the book is eminently readable and allows the reader to consider what it might mean to be human whilst immersed in a particular human and humane story that is compelling and reflective without any trace of egotism. This is a long awaited book that will be welcomed by John Barnie's broad readership and find new readers. -- Publisher: Cinnamon Press","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608305901841,"sku":"GOR007030318","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1909077283.jpg?v=1750769356"},{"product_id":"report-to-alpha-centauri-book-john-barnie-9781788641128","title":"Report to Alpha Centauri","description":"The sense of awe. not only at the grandeur of the universe but also the insignificance of our species is centre-stage in A Report to Alpha Centauri. And John Barnie sets out his stall early, warning, in the poem ‘To the Reader’, that you may want to walk away since, ‘...these poems are out there with the chilly wind \/ and the absence of yellowhammers, with drills and wrecking balls,...’ But anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear should surely stay, not to be comforted but to face the challenging questions, the unflinching honesty and the blazing anger at the hubris that is destroying so much life; life that even in what Conrad calls ‘a soulless universe’ still matters. Barnie calls us to ‘just look’, knowing that like all prophets he is ’... the stranger, the one \/ walking in the wrong direction.’ ('Lock-step')   Serious and sometimes tinged with despair at humanity’s perverse race into self-destruction, captured in striking imagery that lingers, there is also a large and intelligent wit at play here that pours out in wry comments and melancholic humour. Like Kierkegaard’s father shaking a fist at the universe, Barnie raises his voice against the insanities that we all too easily take for granted, refusing to bow to the gods of consumerism. At heart, A Report to Alpha Centauri is a eulogy, written in the heart-rending voice of a visitor from Alpha Centauri, 10 million years after the last humans have left, ‘a world of shadows, a world— though I know this sounds strange, even as I write it down—of ghosts.’ ('A Report to Alpha Centauri')  Sharp, urgent and ultimately humane, this is not poetry that any of us should turn away from.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742781841681,"sku":"NGR9781788641128","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53333522710801,"sku":"GOR012844949","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1788641124.jpg?v=1751426443"},{"product_id":"dunes-of-cwm-rheidol-book-john-barnie-9781788641456","title":"Dunes of Cwm Rheidol","description":"Walking the razor edge between grim reality and stoicism, John Barnie once again brings his intelligence, wit and prescient anger to bear on the world we inhabit and the world we are making. In spine-chilling imagery and with a linguistic dexterity that makes words shine, we are taken to a landscape that is exquisite and familiar, yet simultaneously overwhelmed with wreckage and grief. Staring not only into time's abyss, but into the carnage wrought by human desire for more and more..., these urgent poems carry our collective grief for all that is lost-'there was no one to grieve \/ so I walked beside them, taking it on.' ('Dead Swans on a Winter Coast') And alongside the losses, cultural and ecological, there is also vision, searing and politically acute. Prophetic in the tradition of Robinson Jeffers, but with the lyric compression of William Carlos Williams, whose words provide the epigraph for this collection, Barnie imagines his quiet rural homeland occupied and brutalised in the central sequence, 'Occupied': 'the safety net \/ so full of holes you couldn't catch a whale in it [...]\/ I knew the days of iridescence were lost for ever.' ('Iridescence') While in 'M.A.D.: The Sequel' rhymes skip along with an irony reminiscent of William Blake's use of nursery rhyme metre to convey horror. As the world is incinerated we hear: 'cry if you must \/ there was no one to gather \/ the heart's dust.' Never for the faint-hearted, Dunes of Cwm Rheidol is John Barnie at the height of his powers, writing poetry that is heart-breaking and true. Never for the faint-hearted, Dunes of Cwm Rheidol is John Barnie at the height of his powers, writing poetry that is heart-breaking and true.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742845542673,"sku":"NGR9781788641456","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1788641450.jpg?v=1750766735"},{"product_id":"tsunami-days-book-john-barnie-9781788649858","title":"Tsunami Days","description":"Tsunami Days is a vital collection of essays for those prepared to engage with its unflinching observations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745528062225,"sku":"NGR9781788649858","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50024142733585,"sku":"GOR013838822","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52755401900305,"sku":"NIN9781788649858","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53563602403601,"sku":"NLS9781788649858","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1788649850.jpg?v=1751154155"},{"product_id":"ice-book-john-barnie-9781911540281","title":"Ice","description":"Ambitious and prophetic, this new edition of John Barnie's verse novel, Ice, is increasingly urgent as scientist's debate the possible catastrophe that global warming and human intransigence threaten to unleash. Ice asks what it means to be human and how or whether we can retain humanity in the most extreme of circumstances.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49748906344721,"sku":"NGR9781911540281","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52842146398481,"sku":"NIN9781911540281","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53563554234641,"sku":"NLS9781911540281","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911540289.jpg?v=1751437393"},{"product_id":"city-the-book-john-barnie-9780863839962","title":"City, The","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50287675474193,"sku":"GOR004707854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0863839967.jpg?v=1751265325"},{"product_id":"departure-lounge-book-john-barnie-9781788640091","title":"Departure Lounge","description":"Poetry about politics and society","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50697689563409,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50697691824401,"sku":"NGR9781788640091","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1788640098.jpg?v=1751345780"},{"product_id":"year-of-flowers-a-book-john-barnie-9781848513907","title":"Year of Flowers, A","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51206887801105,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51206888227089,"sku":"GOR006885989","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848513909.jpg?v=1750866404"},{"product_id":"in-the-shadow-of-the-yew-book-john-barnie-9781788641920","title":"In the Shadow of the Yew","description":"In a tight sequence of 33 poems, In the Shadow of the Yew, John Barnie leads us through ‘the cemetery of hopes’ (Conrad). A layered monologue in a distinctive voice that is incisive and deeply questioning, Barnie asks whether the suffering of humanity and the suffering we inflict renders our species a curse. ‘...better than both \/ is the one who has never been born, \/ who has not seen the evil \/ that is done under the sun.’ says the writer of Ecclesiastes, and Barnie sits in a long line of writers who consider that the natural world would be better off without us. There’s a note of Leopardi, Hardy, Beckett, Cioran and, above all, Robinson Jeffers in this unflinching collection, with a tone that builds on Jeffers’s The Double Axe and its philosophy of inhumanism.  And yet, at the heart of this collection, is tenderness and compassion. Woven through poems that refuse to turn away from war and torture, starvation, greed, injustice and suffering, there are glimpses of a childhood by the banks of the Usk, fragments of the stories of friends and loved ones and homage to writers who have come before the poet. And there is a litany of extinct flora and fauna interspersed through the sequence as well as lines mourning so much loss:  six hundred million birds have disappeared from Europe what tonnage is that how many hearts pattering faster than rain on a canopy of leaves  At heart there is a delight in the world that humanity is laying waste to, a yearning for life that is otherwise and the repeated cry: What do we do now?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52606184423697,"sku":"NGR9781788641920","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53571210838289,"sku":"NLS9781788641920","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781788641920.jpg?v=1761260843"},{"product_id":"y-felan-a-finnau-book-john-barnie-9780708311981","title":"Y Felan a Finnau","description":"\u003cp\u003eKILLER LAWMAN Blain Damaron followed the trail of Texas and through New Mexico, over Raton Pass into Colorado. his gun was ready and his thoughts were on the thousand dollars he'd collect for killing his quarry. 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This text explores the possible consequences for philosophy, reliogion and the humanities in general. The essays are written by someone trained in the humanities to understand the new nature and the intellectual restructuring it may require we make. Essays on nature are interspersed with others on poets, including R.S. Thomas, A.R. Ammons and Harry Martinson who have responded in this century to the new thinking about nature.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53522578800913,"sku":"NLS9780708313428","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780708313428.jpg?v=1778458931"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-john-barnie.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}