top of page

Christopher Barnes

PROPAGANDA 41

 

We’ve unsprung.

No verve for indignation.

Erstwhile niceties dwindle.

Prying reproach

Qualifies hurried orders.

 

    *

 

We’ve

                    indignation

Erstwhile

          reproach

              hurried

 

    *

 

We’ve off-the-cuff about-turned.

Bumptious indignation.

Erstwhile dictums sharpen.

Misgivings lug reproach.

Hurried policy aims.

​

​

PROPAGANDA 42

 

Musings of a dodged bullet.

Unlit towers of resisted perimeters.

Gate clattered.

Blunders snagged.

Everything was negated.

 

    *

 

Musings of

                                    perimeters

Gate

              snagged

Everything was

 

    *

 

Musings of truce,

inhabiting perimeters.

Yawning gate.

Bindweed snagged.

Everything was copybook.

​

​

PROPAGANDA 43

 

Tight lips - a precious relief.

Corpse sprawled on garden.

Mustering blackfly.

Overgrown fissures in dross.

We nibbled junket.

 

    *

 

                    precious relief

                              garden

Mustering

                                    dross

                  junket

 

    *

 

Skirmish let-up - precious relief.

Cabbage white fandangles garden.

Mustering backbone after ease.

Ventilating dross.

Hurrahs overhang junket.

In 1998 Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 2000 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology Titles Are Bitches. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of poems. Each year he read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partook in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh. In 2003 he read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse. In 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. He made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains his poem 'The Old Heave-Ho'. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which he read his poem 'On Brenkley St.' The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life. He was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In 2006 he had a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre.

PROPAGANDA 44

 

Headway - vans

Slanting buttress, machine-gun reach.

Prompt dint into jelly eye.

Gears tilt.

Up cast white fabric.

 

    *

 

Headway

                            machine-gun

                                eye

Gears

Up cast

 

    *

 

Iron-will headway.

Cry off machine-gun.

Vista quickens the eye.

Lickety-split gears.

Up cast beggarly flag.

​

​

​

​

​

Hostilities

 

 

Zero hour's grim.

 

Work Capability Assessment -

Undertakers congratulate.

 

Damn all survives unspoiled.

​

​

triangle_small
spikes
bedroom tax
Sheriff Stars

thistles stretch their prickly arms afar

Black Triangle
Disrupt and Upset

Militant Thistles

prickling the politics of "permanent austerity"

bottom of page