Anyone who delves into the depths of the Sustainable Wales website might note the name ‘John Barnie’ crops up a good deal.
In Spring, 2026, Barnie has published his latest collection of poetry, ‘In the Shadow of the Yew’, from his loyal publisher, Cinnamon: thirty three pieces only identified by Roman numerals. (But what a heavy-handed title).
As ever his influences are poets we might consider remote from our lives: Robinson Jeffers, Harry Martinson, RS Thomas, AR Ammons. Also now Conrad’s character in ‘Victory’, Axel Heyst:
All action is bound to be harmful devilish. That is why the world is evil upon the whole. As if existence itself is somehow ironic. Maybe it is.
To balance these seemingly austere male figures, I propose Barnie starts reading Annie Dillard, also recently noted on this website.
‘In the Shadow of the Yew’ teems with names of creatures made extinct by human interference. But this time the poetry is harder to locate, existing in images and lines buried, sometimes crushed, by Barnie’s familiar pessimisms. “I myself have done less good than harm” is the last line of XXV111. As if the writer feels honour bound to apologise for being alive.
As ever, this writer is already engaged on his next collection. That is what John Barnie does, making up for seemingly lost time with relentless creative energy. Now in his late eighties, his writing life began as an academic, before editorship of ‘Planet: the Welsh Internationalist’ allowed a different and more radical and interesting course.
Because he enjoys cooking, my favourite memory of Barnie the man is preparing for me (June, 2025) an Indian-inspired meal. And afterwards standing with me outside his house in Comins Coch, waiting for a bus. How thoughtful of Ceredigion council to erect a bus shelter outside the home of this inveterate non-driver. Our ‘one billion, forty-seven million’ vehicles, by the way, get their comeuppance in XXV.
With Annie Dillard he shares a horror of social media and the internet yet maintains his own website.
And anyone who delves into Sustainable Wales should note from my interview with this inevitably stubborn poet, his quotation from TS Eliot: ‘“Old men ought to be explorers.” There’s too much to see, hear, read, and experience to start putting on slippers and watching daytime TV’.
On the inside cover of this volume is a listing of the poet’s thirty volumes. I urge anyone interested in modern poetry to delve into this quiver. So many wonderful arrows, and, thankfully, almost all with titles. But this from XXV1:
a mountain bluebird in Saskatchewan
blue as the bluest lapis lazuli
in the washed-out after-winter land.
Lots of birds in this collection, and the reader can be sure twitcher Barnie has spotted every one. Except the extinct ones. What’s also distinctive are the frequent summonings of Abergavenny life and the town’s people. Viewed this way, the collection is one poem of thirty-three cantos composed of shattered and unfinishable narrratives. Incohesively arresting. I have to smile at this from XXX1:
why are skulls always grinning
as if they’d enjoyed it hugely
and now could stare at the Sun
And to his faithful publisher I suggest a ‘best of’ selection to sort through hundreds of poems. That’s a publication now overdue. ‘The RS Thomas Poetry Appreciation Group’ already exists on social media. The RS quandary was the absence of ‘God’, while Barnie’s is the preponderance of ‘Time’. Similarly an as yet untitled “tight band” of admirers for this Aberystwyth writer will surely one day modestly flourish. I will be amongst them. Yes, long may you run, John Barnie.
Robert Minhinnick
22.3.26