Reviews

Whether you have read John Barnie's work over many years, or are new to it, this 'miscellany ... of memory, reflection, scholarly analysis, and creative pieces' works as a celebration of Barnie's work across decades as writer, editor and musician. It is, as editor Matthew Jarvis says, 'a communal response to a writer who is justifiably described ... as "one of Wales's most distinguished and respected literary figures"'. Jarvis opens by introducing Barnie's prolific body of work and explains the title, taken from the writer's poem, 'Dawn Chorus', published in his 1996 collection Heroes where birds are described as being 'wired to the dynamo/of blood and bone'. Equally, the cover photo of Barnie playing his resonator guitar is a reminder of the many talents of a man 'wired to the dynamo' of creative engagement. Richard Marggraf Turley, fellow member of the poetry and blues trio Hollow Log, captures Barnie's love of the blues in his poem, 'Mr Barnie Got the Blues': 'It's the blues, see, he growls as he strums/It's the blues, see, he growls as he strums,/Just like it was in the old kingdoms.//A-woo-oooh, a-woooh, a-wooh'. The book is organised thematically under the headings: Friendship, Memory, Music, Science, Editing, Nature, Art, Poetry. These cover main areas of Barnie's interests, work and life, and there is a coda which includes an insightful interview with Barnie by Jarvis. A 'Checklist of Major Works' serves as a useful resource. One of the real strengths of this volume is the range and quality of work included, the mix of genres. Some of Wales's most prestigious writers are gathered here to pay tribute, in their various ways, to a man who sits at the heart of Wales's cultural and literary life. Greg Hill's essay explores his long friendship with Barnie, along with John's self-avowed atheism. Hill writes that he shares 'John's disapproval of the way religious institutions function as agents of repression and hypocrisy' and notes one of Barnie's key themes of 'human beings as lonely travellers through the cosmos'. Hill acknowledges that he finds such an outlook 'affirming rather than negative', but yet is able - testament to the friendship - to also distinguish his own position: 'I wouldn't call myself an atheist'. All the same, 'John has always been a challenging friend whose writings hold me to account for my responses to them'. Mike Jenkins' 'friendship' poem, 'Only Now', gives us a snapshot of Barnie 'emerging/from that red shed/full of clutter. From your hibernation/as the sun hovers/over your adopted Ceredigion'. Some of the poets have written on themes that run through Barnie's work, such as David Lloyd's 'Some Birds for John Barnie' and Zoe Skoulding's inventive 'Germinal' sequence, both from the 'Nature' section. Ned Thomas's essay, 'Sunlight in Your Hands', discusses Barnie as a memoirist, with focus on Tales of the Shopocracy (2009) but also some discussion of the later Footfalls in the Silence (2014). John Barnie grew up in Abergavenny 'after the Second World War', and his earlier memoir serves also as 'a social history' of a post-war 'small-town world', albeit with the mountains of that area, 'the Skirrids, the Blorenge, the Sugar Loaf ... a continuous presence on the skyline'. Ned Thomas first established Planet magazine in 1970 to create, as it says on the Planet website, 'a forum for debate about Wales in English, as well as encouraging a dialogue between English-speaking Wales and Welsh-speaking Wales'. As Gwen Davies writes in her piece, 'Desk Editor: At Planet with John Barnie, 1985-1991', 'kindness, humanity, wit, heart, and truth are what John is about, as is literature'. Emily Trahair, current Planet editor, also reminds us, in her essay, of Barnie's 'editorial agility' and his awareness of 'magazine publishing as craft and vocation', where 'accuracy, precision, and clarity are imperative'. In his editorials, Barnie, from that small office in Aberystwyth, often wrote with foresight about political decisions that would have lasting and disastrous effects, such as the 'War on Terror', 'runaway capitalism' and climate change, something that Barnie would go on to address in his superb 2001 'verse novel', Ice. Barnie is left to have the final word, a nice editorial touch. In his interview of 2017, Jarvis asks 'What is "ultimately important" to you at the moment?' Barnie's answer is 'human overpopulation'. To him, this is 'the root cause of all the other woes that are already upon us - climate change, mass extinction, deforestation, desertification, the pollution of the oceans'. And yet, despite everything, 'the poems keep coming', and while they do, he will 'write them down'. For Robert Minhinnick, 'Barnie's art is a constant and ritualistic reaffirmation of poetry itself'. For Barnie, it is, he supposes, 'a kind of celebration'. -- Fiona Owen @ www.gwales.com