| Over the last decade, British writer John Barlow has become one of the world’s most respected and best loved writers of haiku and tanka. Haiku North America have described him as one ‘of the best haiku poets writing in English’ and his awards from the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the UK further confirm the appreciation of this man’s work. Aside from writing exceptionally poignant, delicate and often crushingly subtle haiku and tanka (examples of which appear in his two collections, Snow About to Fall and Waiting for the Seventh Wave), John Barlow has also edited the tanka journal Tangled Hair and the haiku magazine Snapshots, as well as The Haiku Calendar, which continues to delight readers and writers of haiku worldwide. It’s hard to imagine that this extremely hard working writer and editor finds any time to leave his desk and turn his attentions to the tranquillity of another of his passions – nature, and particularly, birds. Yet, with the imminent publication of Wing Beats with poet Matthew Paul and photographer Sean Gray, John Barlow proves that his awareness and appreciation of British bird life is finely tuned. Even within haiku, a form of poetry that is traditionally engaged with the natural world, John Barlow transcends convention to present what William J. Higginson calls ‘artistically moving and intellectually stimulating’ poetry. 3LIGHTS is enormously fortunate to present The Bittern’s Neck, an exhibition of bird-related haiku, tanka and photography, complementing the release of Wing Beats. We’re grateful to John Barlow and Sean Gray for giving us this opportunity to share with our readers a remarkable encounter with haiku, tanka and the natural environment in which these forms of poetry can thrive. Liam Wilkinson, February 2008 |
| John Barlow |