National Poetry Competition 2nd Prize Winner
matt
barnard
Writer & Poet
‘Like all the best poets, Matt Barnard knows how to make poems bigger than themselves; short lyrics like ‘Please Follow the Yellow Line,’ ‘The Day Twilight Went on for Days’ and ‘Border Patrol’ manage to fill the page and the time beyond their reading, treading a nice line in Larkinesque terror.’
Available to buy in paperback, Kindle and Audible formats
‘A wide range of subject material and a knack for ‘telling it slant’ distinguishes this lively and perceptive collection. Here is a poet interested in the makers, of bread, of maps… He connects imaginatively with danger, moments of crisis, and with the impact of the natural and animal world across time and history, in poems about the whale, the dog, the cat, crows, cows, gannets. There’s a grounded fascination with myth here, also, making this an absorbing and thought-provoking read.’
Penelope Shuttle (poet and novelist)
‘From its opening poem, ‘A Lamp Shop,’ in which the speaker finds himself wondering ‘why all the bulbs are lit through the night,’ and notices ‘the town drunk hunkering down/in the doorwell opposite, his back turned to the light,’ Anatomy of a Whale is an accessible and richly symbolic collection. Like the most welcome guests, these restrained and powerful poems announce themselves forcefully, don’t outstay their welcome, and leave our rooms changed.‘
Jonathan Edwards (winner of the Costa Book Award for Poetry)
‘This is a varied and rewarding collection. The poems are imaginative and well-crafted, alert to the vagaries of the human predicament, as well as offering often surprising perspectives on the natural world.’
Carole Satyamurti (poet and sociologist)
About Matt Barnard
Matt Barnard was born and grew up in London, starting life south of the river in Lewisham before moving north, eventually settling in Willesden Green in Brent, one of the most diverse boroughs in one of the most diverse cities in the world.
Matt and his wife divide their time between London and the Isle of Skye. Though he spent time in Scotland as a child, the connection with the Skye is the result of his wife’s family’s long association with the island. The landscapes of both London and Skye, two very different environments, reoccur frequently in his writing, which embraces the poetry of both places.
Matt’s pamphlet, The Bends, was published by Eyewear Press and his first full collection, Anatomy of a Whale, by The Onslaught Press. He also edited Poems for the NHS (The Onslaught Press), which marked the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service. Matt has been published widely in magazines and his poem Two Boys at Midnight won second prize in the National Poetry Competition 2024. He has also won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize with his poem The Sore Thumb and his poem Eel was highly commended in the Bridport Prize.
Alongside poetry, Matt writes short fiction and his story The Last Damn Peach won the Ink Tears short story competition while A Handful of Nails won the Momaya short story competition. His stories have also been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize, read at Liar’s League, and published in Stories for Homes 2.
Matt works as a social and behavioural scientist, and has a degree in history and economics and a PhD in social research and evaluation, both from the University of Cambridge. He has developed a new, integrated approach to understanding behaviour, which he uses to help understand and find solutions to entrenched issues facing vulnerable individuals, families and communities.
Matt is currently working on a second collection of poetry and his first novel.
Matt Barnard was born and grew up in London, starting life south of the river in Lewisham before moving north, eventually settling in Willesden Green in Brent, one of the most diverse boroughs in one of the most diverse cities in the world.
Matt and his wife divide their time between London and the Isle of Skye. Though he spent time in Scotland as a child, the connection with the Skye is the result of his wife’s family’s long association with the island. The landscapes of both London and Skye, two very different environments, reoccur frequently in his writing, which embraces the poetry of both places.
Matt’s pamphlet, The Bends, was published by Eyewear Press and his first full collection, Anatomy of a Whale, by The Onslaught Press. He also edited Poems for the NHS (The Onslaught Press), which marked the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service. Matt has been published widely in magazines and his poem Two Boys at Midnight won second prize in the National Poetry Competition 2024. He has also won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize with his poem The Sore Thumb and his poem Eel was highly commended in the Bridport Prize.
Alongside poetry, Matt writes short fiction and his story The Last Damn Peach won the Ink Tears short story competition while A Handful of Nails won the Momaya short story competition. His stories have also been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize, read at Liar’s League, and published in Stories for Homes 2.
Matt works as a social and behavioural scientist, and has a degree in history and economics and a PhD in social research and evaluation, both from the University of Cambridge. He has developed a new, integrated approach to understanding behaviour, which he uses to help understand and find solutions to entrenched issues facing vulnerable individuals, families and communities.
Matt is currently working on a second collection of poetry and his first novel.
Books & Pamphlets
The Bends
In a pamphlet that combines influences as diverse as Alice Oswald, Mimi Khalvati and Wislawa Szymborska, Matt Barnard embraces eclectism in an exploration of the wide-ranging tones and diction in the English language.
This anthology includes poems about receiving life-saving treatment, about the people who deliver that treatment with empathy and resilience, about friends and family and their intimate journeys and about the impact of ill-health…
What’s next?
A Portrait of a Cello
Matt is currently working on his first novel, A Portrait of a Cello, a multi-perspective epic that ranges over three centuries and two continents.
Great cellos are not bought and sold, they are bequeathed, passed down from cellist to cellist in an unbroken line of musicians, each one merely its temporary keeper. So how does a cello, played by some of the masters of the past – Jacques Dupont, who was forced to perform for Napoleon during a break in hostilities, Mirjam Ott, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, Daniel Haimovitz who perished in Buchenwald – end up in a dumpster in Brooklyn, New York, while its current owner, the celebrated, genre-crossing Yiki Zahn, is lying in a hospital bed in Mount Sinai Emergency Room? And will the 250-year-old instrument ever be played again?
Portrait of a Cello charts the extraordinary history of a priceless cello and the tumultuous lives and deaths of its famous owners, a journey that seems destined to end in the tragic loss of one of the finest instruments of its kind ever made.
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Contact us
To contact Matt, please email barnardmj@aol.com or fill in the contact form below.
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Matt Barnard photograph credit – Alexandra Photography
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