when does a ladybird
become a teardrop

Photographs and poems are copyrighted © by Phil Barnett. All rights reserved.

the hornbeam
signed its name
upon itself

Photographs and poems are copyrighted © by Phil Barnett. All rights reserved.

“ladybird teardrop” photograph and poem were posted to the artist’s Facebook page on 28 October 2023, and “the hornbeam” photograph and poem, on 17 September 2023. Images and poems appear here with Barnett’s permission.

Phil Barnett

is a photographer, writer, musician, artist, and naturalist, who has a passion for the birds that kept him company through a decade-long, debilitating illness during which he was chair-bound. He expresses his love for the natural world—in particular for the countryside outside his front door in South Lancashire, “The Patch”—through music, painting, photography, and more recently, writing prose and poetry. He is the author of Birds Knit My Ribs Together (Arachne Press, 2024), a collection of poetry that blurs the distinctions between himself and birds; a kind of ornimorphology where, rather than give the birds human characteristics, the reverse happens and Barnett occasionally imagines himself as a bird.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Phil Barnett: The Secret Nature of Illness, an interview by Leslie Tate: Author and Poet (10 July 2023)

⚡ Dog Rose Dance by Phil Barnett (February 2018); melodic percussive music produced from sounds he made using guitar, water, wine bottle, rose twigs, and rose hips. One might say, It’s a hip composition.