Product Description

Bruce Barnes’ first collection of poems is immediately distinguished by the tender, almost clownlike, style. But this air of absent-mindedness is deceptive, and maybe more curious by the poems’ exact comparison, Unexpected characters and situations surface: the redundant kamikaze pilot, 1920s women on a charabanc trip, a Mexican sweet-seller…

Bruce Barnes was born in Leytonstone, London, in 1948. He studied law at Liverpool and Leeds Polytechnic. He worked in a legal advice centre before progressing into working for a mental health charity and latterly speech therapy.

He tackles the big themes from odd angles and his performances celebrate a love of word sounds inspired by early years in the speech therapist’s chair. Travel inspires him too, whether it’s up the road to the postbox, or on the buses in the Yucatan, Mexico. His work has appeared in poetry magazines, anthologies and on London buses, and he’s a regular prize winner in poetry competitions including the Yorkshire Open (2nd/02), and the Ilkley Literature Festival Poetry Prize (1st/98). In 2001 he was granted a Writers Award from Yorkshire Arts to finish work on 2nd Collection,’Somewhere Else’; both his first collection,’The Lovelife of the Absent-minded’, Phoenix Press 1993, and his current collection,’Somewhere Else’,Interchange (Summer 2003), are available from Bruce at the above address. Bruce is a member of the National Association of Writers in Education,N.A.W.E, and co-ordinates the Bradford Poetry Workshop. He’s available for work in schools or with adults and will consider commissions for poems for special occassions.