Christopher Barnes

Separation

In blue-grey dapples
stripped to raffish lines
your eyes stretch like snails.

You sit heavily,
monosyllables of rain
mapping skin.

Each jounce of petticoat
ruffles at your arm
outstretched,
upturned into a star
restyling our understandings.

Every parting
drowned in the now, the here,
should sink like this.

The Baldy Bittern

She’s reflective, is rippleforms
in the well. Itchmites
are intimately disenchanted
at that crick-point neck
but her back
curves back
into the world.

Christopher Barnes: In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbain and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I am about to make a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. He has 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. The film is going into an archive at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle and contains his poem The Old Heave-Ho. He is working on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which will exhibit at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University before touring the country and it is expected to go abroad, this will be funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life.

Christopher Kelen Ben Kemp Christopher Barnes Kenji Siratori