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. shaunbarrphotography.co.uk
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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
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 · 27d
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 · 9d
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 · 13d
"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
Reposted by Shaun Barr
forgottenpoets.bsky.social

From ‘Magdalene: Poems’ (2017)
—Marie Howe

#poetry #poems #booksky
Magdalene: The Addict I liked hell. I liked to go there alone Relieved to lie in the wreckage, ruined, Physically undone. The worst had happened. What else Could hurt me? I thought it was the worst, thought Nothing worse could come. Then nothing did, and no one.
October 16, 2025 at 10:38 PM
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pimlicat.bsky.social
Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley. Perfection.
October 16, 2025 at 3:04 PM
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arealmofwonder.bsky.social
• Edward Thomas •
October 16, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
forgottenpoets.bsky.social
.
From 'Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings' (2015)
—Joy Harjo

#poetry #poem #booksky
Fall Song It is a dark fall day. The earth is slightly damp with rain. I hear a jay. The cry is blue.
October 11, 2025 at 8:26 PM
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stonecirclereview.bsky.social
A successful moment of poetry won't let you calculate anything, for as long as it lasts, it is a mental force that silences all other mental forces.

-- Clive James
October 7, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
arealmofwonder.bsky.social
Pause, and read...

• Kenneth C. Steven •
October 7, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
lrb.co.uk
Tony Harrison’s poem ‘V.’ is to be performed in the Leeds cemetery that inspired it.

The day of site-specific readings will now also serve as a tribute to the poet, who died last week.

Read the article: www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/s...

Book tickets here: www.slunglow.org/v-a-homecomi...
Tony Harrison’s poem V to be performed in the Leeds cemetery that inspired it
The site-specific performance of the once controversial poem was planned for its 40th anniversary in October, but will now double as a tribute to the writer who died last week
www.theguardian.com
October 2, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Shaun Barr
poetsfortheplanet.bsky.social
If you haven't heard of Poets for the Planet until now please take a look at our website for more information about who we are and what we do. Our artwork was created by the wonderful Henny Beaumont. #poetrysky #nationalpoetryday poetsfortheplanet.org.uk
Blue and white watercolour painting with Poets for the Planet in large letters painted across the centre
October 2, 2025 at 1:48 PM