From the City to the Country
With a nod to Elizabeth Bishop
Stuart Barnes
Once, I liked
to visit
downtown—ground
zero. Spiked
gin fizz, it
overwound
me, green, psyched.
Exquisite
as field-sound,
fear shunpiked.
I quiz it
—sheaves resound.
Stuart Barnes is the author of Like To The Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023) and Glasshouses (UQP, 2016), which won the 2015 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, was commended for the 2016 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the 2017 Mary Gilmore Award. His poem ‘Sestina after B. Carlisle’ won the 2021/22 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Others have been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, the ACU Prize for Poetry and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Recently Stuart guest co-edited, with Claire Gaskin, Australian Poetry Journal 11.1 ‘local, attention’. Twitter/Instagram: @StuartABarnes