Bruce Barnes was born in 1948, a Cockney, at a maternity hospital in the sound of Bow Bells, but subsequently emigrated to Bradford, Up North.   In between times he was educated at Leeds and Liverpool Polytechnic, Keele University, and Birkbeck College.  He has worked as a smallholder, a law lecturer, a legal advice worker, and currently in a mental health advocacy project, which includes supporting service user writing groups in hospital and community settings.

Whilst in London, he was joint co-ordinator of Islington Poetry Workshop and a member of the Blue Nose Poetry Collective.

In Bradford, he is a member of the Interchange performance poetry troupe, co-ordinates Bradford Poetry workshop, and organizes poetry events in the wild expectation that there is an audience in Bradford. Until recently he was joint co-ordinator of the Lapidus regional group.

His poems have appeared in many magazines including Braquemard,  Poetry Wales, the Bound Spiral, Poetry London Newsletter, Poems on the Buses 1995, 1996, 1997, Krax, Pennine Platform, Island, Manifold, and in anthologies such as Beyond Bedlam, Spirit of Bradford,  In the Company of Poets - The Torriano Anthology 2003 celebrating 21 years of readings, and in Four Ways; Phoenix Press,Newbury,Berks 1985; ( a four poets anthology including, Sue Stewart, Louise Hudson and Bart Keegan).

He frequently crops up in the runners-up lists of poetry competitions and in 2005 won the York Writers Poetry Competition and third place in the Plough Prize. In  2000 he won a Yorkshire Arts Writers Award.  He has read and performed his poetry throughout Britain, and in Canada and the States.

He has published two collections of poetry:

 ‘the lovelife of the absent-minded’ ( Newbury:Phoenix Press 1993)

“Bruce Barnes’ poems are unlike any others I know. They move with a quiet, thrilling surrealism, yet never lose touch with the rag and bone shop of the heart”

Martyn Crucefix

  ‘Somewhere Else’ (Bradford:Utistugu Press 2003)

“Bruce Barnes’ second collection resonates with a truly original voice or rather he displays, especially in the ‘monologues’, a gift for personae”

Bill Broady.

contact

and in the shop ...
collections:
"the lovelife of the absent-minded",
Phoenix Press;

"Somewhere Else"
the Utistugu Press

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