what if / I actually—am—a bird / my cupped hands / opening to release me...
Phil Barnett's relationship with birds is so close that his poetry blurs the distinctions between himself and the birds-a kind of ornimorphology where rather than giving the birds human characteristics, the reverse happens, and he imagines himself as a bird. Phil Barnett is a photographer, writer, musician, artist and naturalist, who has a passion for the birds that kept him company through a long hard illness. His photography and poetry have quite a following on social media, which is where we found him, on The Daily Haiku. His skill as a photographer leads to an acute visual sensibility, and his slow recovery moves from a tick sheet his mother had to fill in for him, to extraordinary poetry-full of wit and wonder and spectacular language.
"The quality of Barnett's writing is always thrilling, often dizzying and exhilarating in its attention to detail and its subtle marriages of sound and meaning."
