Shaun Barr
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shaunbarr.bsky.social
Shaun Barr
@shaunbarr.bsky.social
3K followers 520 following 240 posts
Poet, photographer, gardener, writer. Cumbria, UK. Poetry most recently published in The Manchester Review, Dream Catcher, The Frogmore Papers. shaunbarrphotography.co.uk
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shaunbarr.bsky.social
Shaun Barr @shaunbarr.bsky.social · Jul 4
Delighted to share the latest issue of The Manchester Review with you, which among some fine poems I'm thrilled to say includes two of my own - a real milestone. Free to subscribe. Reposts very much appreciated.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #writers #poets
Issue 27 - The Manchester Review
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Editorial Róisín Leggett Bohan, 3 poems Livi Michael, ‘Signs’ Immanuel Misfud, ‘Rue Garenne’ (trans. Ruth Ward) Cormac Culkeen, ‘My Dog Ate the Sun’ Laur...
www.themanchesterreview.co.uk
Reposted by Shaun Barr
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Barry Dempster, RIP
The Silent Planet This is a world of hope unspoken. The heart's canals sink deep within the tunnels of a silver mine. Emotions etched in stone. Bodies always seem to tremble, stall. Waiting on a sudden spill, a waterfall of silver fire hollowing the fragile bones. A stoic planet, this silence of defeat. Expectations echo, dwindle down to muffled sounds of grief. Pebbles rolling off the edge of a cliff.
November 28, 2025 at 2:14 AM
shaunbarr.bsky.social
“The true meaning of a poem isn’t hidden in a textbook, or in the mind of a teacher, or expert, or even the poet who wrote it. It comes to be, each time, in the mind of each half-dreaming reader.”
Matthew Zapruder
#poetry #writingcommunity
November 26, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
sashadugdale.bsky.social
A beautiful reading by @notjustdancing.bsky.social tonight for the launch of Hotel Amour. As @serenbooks.bsky.social editor @zoebrigley.bsky.social said, it's a beautiful brilliant book, full of nearly unbearable grief and nearly unbearable joy. www.serenbooks.com/book/hotel-a...
Hôtel Amour - Seren
“Extraordinary in its formal conception and emotional accuracy…” – The Telegraph “This is simply extraordinary writing, laced with wonder and devastation…” – Joanna Klink A sequel to her T. S. Eliot P...
www.serenbooks.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:22 PM
shaunbarr.bsky.social
“When have I ever not loved
the pain of love?

The inimitable Walcott, with a poem that packs a powerful punch.

#poems #poetrycommunity #writing
November 23, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Charles Simic
My Possessions I have lots of dead friends And few streets I still roam With eyes open or shut Hoping to run into them. I have address books big and small With crossed out names Two clocks and many wristwatches I haven't heard tick in years. I have a large black umbrella I'm scared to open indoors As well as outdoors No matter how hard it rains. Like a cobbler lost in a shoe He is repairing I rarely look up From what I'm doing, One foot in the grave, all but certain.
November 22, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
If you're working on submissions this weekend, remember @icefloepress.bsky.social is open to your visionary, expansive hybrids on PROCESS/ MARGINALIA/OTHERWOR(L)D(S)!

Hybrid = 2 mediums at least.

Some brilliant work coming in so far. Deadline: 30 November.

We look forward to reading your work🔥
icefloepress.bsky.social Ice Floe Press (Open for Subs) @icefloepress.bsky.social · 17d
We've extended our call for subs
PROCESS / MARGINALIA / OTHERWOR(L)D(S) until Nov 30th 2025.
poems/video/prose/CNF/essay/art/photo/sound pieces 2 elements incl. aspects of process & margins however you conceive that. Excited for groundbreaking unpublished wonder! send to: [email protected]
Poster for Sub extension for PROCESS/ MARGINALIA / OTHERWOR(L)D(S) 2 elements hybrid work Send to icefloeprojects@gmail.com Open till Nov 30, 2025 Send up to 5 works or 10 pages max Attach video works in Mp4 format/ sound works Mp3 poems and prose in word doc (with extra PDF attachment if work requires complex formatting) Send art and other visuals in 72 dpi (if we wish to accept the work we will ask for higher res files a time of acceptance. Include an author bio and photo up to 100 words with submission. We are looking for video / photo / poems / prose /CNF /ESSAY /hybrids/ Songs / Spoken word/ Collaborations/ Translations / Transliteration. Send to icefloeprojects@gmail.com Ty and looking forward to unpublished new innovative works!
November 23, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
onlypoemsmag.bsky.social
Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you've no longer been bested by these events.

— Louise Glück
November 21, 2025 at 7:03 PM
shaunbarr.bsky.social
"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"

Emily Dickinson

#poetry #poetrycommunity #books #reading
November 18, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
lrb.co.uk
‘There is no doubt that food was available in Ireland throughout the crisis – just not to those who needed it most.’

Niamh Gallagher on a new history of the Great Famine.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Niamh Gallagher · Carrion and Earth: Ireland’s Great Famine
Although Ireland had endured earlier famines – including one in the 1740s that, proportionally, claimed more lives...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 15, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
arealmofwonder.bsky.social
“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

November's Harmony
🎨 T.C. Steele (1893)
November 16, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
susanlleary.bsky.social
Chelsea Dingman ♥️

“There is such violence / in the sunset.”

@chelsdingman.bsky.social
Sunset Do you forget the roar of tiny lungs unsettling your sleep? How I was once, a sparrow lost in the yard? Or was it safer for you to let him open new seams, your scars still so raw? I used to wake and run all of the faucets, as if we lived inside the falls. The house, lit like a constellation. Was I ever yours after that? There is such violence in the sunset. You wanted me to beg, but I held my breath as I wanted to be held. I should have said I wanted sky to claim the stars. That I understood to be a good girl I had to lie low like the aging hardwood floor. But, when I return, it's to stand in the soft light on the sun-porch. To admit the sunsets are drawn by my hand.
November 15, 2025 at 4:16 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
blackboughpoetry.bsky.social
This years Christmas-Winter anthology is a bumper 50 pages more than last year's. That can mean only one thing! More poems!

Art work by Gower artist Emma Bissonnet.
November 14, 2025 at 7:27 PM
shaunbarr.bsky.social
Sharing a poem I found today by @shelaghrowanlegg.bsky.social from an interview by @pinholepoetry.bsky.social

Love the exquisitely crafted musicality that weaves its way throughout in lines such as:

'in that solitude / that sees any light / as solace and succour.'
#poetry #poetrycommunity
pinholepoetry.bsky.social Pinhole Poetry @pinholepoetry.bsky.social · Oct 20
Shelagh Rowan-Legg joins our interview series today, sharing her poem ‘Moths are older than dinosaurs…’ along with her thoughts about revision, how making short films is similar to writing poetry, and the role of a poet to keep asking questions.

pinholepoetry.ca/an-interview...
...the more I write, the more I realize there isn't one big question to answer, or if there is, likely it's already been answered long ago. But I think each generation has a new set of questions, and it's a poet's job to reveal those questions, and try to answer them. ? Moths are older than dinosaurs, and often only live a few days You must always be drunk - Charles Baudelaire Their secret: they turn everything they consume to alcohol. Or more precisely, just enough to fly in that solitude that sees any light as solace and succour. This is how they have outsmarted meteors, deluges, droughts. They can always find bark or wool, blood or fungus, to make the moth's equivalent of a thimbleful, enough to give them cadence and swagger to dodge proverbial bullets of extinction. Tipsy-swayed, survival through brazen insouciance for nothing but some insistent illumination.
November 13, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
shelaghrowanlegg.bsky.social
you will pry the oxford comma and em-dashes from my cold, dead hands
whimsicalmuse.bsky.social The Whimsical Muse @whimsicalmuse.bsky.social · 22d
Someone just informed me that they find the Oxford comma to be “overrated and unnecessary."

I find such comments to be discourteous, disrespectful, and unwarranted.
November 8, 2025 at 4:25 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
A strange experience yesterday. Afternoon collapsed on itself, not with a star’s power, exploded radiance falling back in concentrated immensity, but a drear apotheosis, a hum just above silent amid soiled white light. It was emptiness, not meditative or inviting action but a special kind of nothing
November 10, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
arealmofwonder.bsky.social
"From the true opponent, a limitless courage flows into you."
~ Franz Kafka

🎨 László Mednyánszky (1890)
November 7, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
arealmofwonder.bsky.social
Pause for a moment, and read...

• Sara Teasdale •
November 5, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
onlypoemsmag.bsky.social
You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

— Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
November 5, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
hannahl1n.bsky.social
After a break, I've started adding to my 7th UK Poets list.

Look in my Starter Packs for all 6 lists (see comments)+ to find 900 poets based in the UK. You can browse or follow all on each list so it makes it easier to find people.

+ link to the thread of above poets

bsky.app/starter-pack...
November 4, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
sanctorium.bsky.social
To detach yourself elegantly from the world; to give contour and grace to sadness; a solitude in style; a walk that gives cadence to memories; stepping towards the intangible; with the breath in the trembling margins of things;

Emil Cioran
November 3, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
stonecirclereview.bsky.social
“Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject. Write about it by day and dream about it by night.”

-- E.B. White
November 3, 2025 at 2:05 PM
shaunbarr.bsky.social
Jack Gilbert knew a thing or two about loss, distilling it here with exquisite precision.

“Grief makes the heart apparent
as much as sudden happiness can.”
phillipcrymble.bsky.social phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 26d
"the ruin of our garden / in the early dark of November"

Jack Gilbert
HARM AND BOON IN THE MEETINGS We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day. Harm and boon in the meetings. As heart meets what is not heart, the way the spirit encounters the flesh and the mouth meets the foreignness in another mouth. We stand looking at the ruin of our garden in the early dark of November, hearing crows go over while the first snow shines coldly everywhere. Grief makes the heart apparent as much as sudden happiness can.
November 3, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
etreharne.bsky.social
The glory that is my hometown—Aberystwyth. Wales’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Y peth gorau!

unesco.org.uk/news/wales-f...
Wales’ first UNESCO City of Literature: Aberystwyth Ceredigion joins global network of Creative Cities | UNESCO in the UK
Today, 31 October 2025, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, has become Wales’ first UNESCO City of Literature…
unesco.org.uk
November 1, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
litbowl.bsky.social
From Naomi Shihab Nye's book, Everything Comes Next: bookshop.org/a/862/9780063013452

#poem #books #writing
November 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
wynterrayven.bsky.social
Aspens will always be my favorite but in the Autumn they really ✨ 🍂🍂
#Photography
#Nature
#BlueSkyArtShow
#Autumn
November 2, 2025 at 1:53 AM