Eyewear has always liked barbers, with their scissors and brio. But not just the kind from Seville. Some of the best are poets (see "Albanese Barber Shop"). Therefore, it is a pleasure to welcome Ros Barber (see photo) this Friday.Barber is a prize-winning poet (Writers Inc Poet of the Year 2000, runner up in the National Poetry Competition 1987, 1997, 1999) and short story writer (Independent on Sunday Short Story Comp 1997, Asham Award 1999).
Her first collection of poetry, How Things Are On Thursday (Anvil) was hailed as "beautifully crafted" (Orbis) and "an enjoyable and satisfying read" (The North). Ian McMillan, of Radio 3's The Verb, recently dubbed her "the Poet Laureate of the South Coast".
She has been poet in residence in Herne Bay, on the Isle of Sheppey, in a dilapidated block of flats, at a barber shop, and at Arts Council England. Having also published "Not the Usual Grasses Singing" from her Sheppey residency, she is currently working on her second collection for Anvil.
Her site and witty blog, Shallowland, can be found at:
www.rosbarber.com & http://shallowland.blogspot.com/
The following is the pivotal poem in the sequence of seven sonnets she wrote about Embassy Court, in Brighton, where the building's fate was compared to that of a once-beautiful woman:
What Happens To Women
It’s what happens to women, no matter who you are.
Divine inside? They’ll only see the face.
It’s coming, despite your warmth, your grit, your heart –
the sudden shift from beauty, to disgrace.
A light snapped off, and you’re gone. You’re in the dark.
No-one can see you now. You are unglued,
for while you slept, the world took you softly apart.
Now man after man walks through the ghost of you.
On a morning like any other, she wakes to find
her lover moved out, and all her admirers gone
from her steps, as if with one breath, one mind,
they abandoned their roses there like skeletons.
A half-penned love note stutters towards the sea,
embarrassed, undoing its ‘love’, and ‘dear’, and ‘we’.
poem by Ros Barber
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