Stuart Barnes's Blog

Hell Herons is a spokenword+music collective from the Canberra region + Queensland, Australia, featuring award-winning poets/writers/performers/makers Nigel Featherstone, Melinda Smith, CJ Bowerbird and me.

Our debut album The Wreck Event was released worldwide on June 29, 2024. All music written, performed and recorded by Nigel. Words and vocal performances by Nigel, Melinda, CJ and me. Vocals recorded and treated by + noise manipulation by + album mixed and mastered by Kimmo Vennonen of kv productions.

In his review of The Wreck Event Will Yeoman says the album ‘is both wreck and event, destroying boundaries between poetry and music in a way song doesn’t always manage while marking another milestone in Australian poetic practice. It’s also, quite simply, beautiful.’

Listen to and download The Wreck Event at Bandcamp.

Stream The Wreck Event.

Visit the Hell Herons YouTube channel.

I’m delighted that Like to the Lark has been shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Thanks to the judges — Elizabeth McMahon, Ann Vickery, Ali Alizadeh — and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, to my publisher Terri-ann White and Upswell Publishing and my editor Felicity Plunkett without whom this book could not exist, and congratulations to the other authors — Jordie Albiston, Katherine Brabon, J M Coetzee, Sara M Saleh, Omar Sakr, Alexis Wright. Winner announced in July.

Use code GOLDMEDAL at the Upswell webshop until June 30 for FREE POSTAGE on Like to the Lark.

Pleased to have a poem, ‘The White Rabbit’s Tritina’ (for Z. H.) in Dancing about Architecture and Other Ekphrastic Maneuvers along with beauties by Cassandra Atherton, Oz Hardwick, Felicity Plunkett, Jess Wilkinson, Paul Hetherington, Dominique Hecq, Jen Webb, Alvin Pang, Leo Boix, Pascale Petit, John McCullough and many more. Thanks to editors Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington. Each poem in this gorgeously curated anthology is followed by a Commentary. Mine responds to a portrait by L. B. of Tinkerbell the rabbit and nineteen-year-old me.

I’m delighted that Like to the Lark has been long-listed for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Thanks to the judges — Elizabeth McMahon, Ann Vickery, Ali Alizadeh — and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, to Terri-ann White and Upswell Publishing, and congratulations to the other authors. Shortlist announced soon!

‘If you want a queer monument look around you.’

A real pleasure co-editing with brilliant friend and poet Willo Drummond (whose Moon Wrasse was recently shortlisted for the 2024 Kenneth Slessor Prize; my Like to the Lark was highly commended) the Queering Ecopoet(h)ics issue of Plumwood Mountain Journal. 

Thanks to Willo, to Plumwood Mountain Journal editor Amanda Lucas-Frith, thanks to the poets for these queer monuments — all of them speak urgently to the ethics of dwelling and care on this shared place we call Earth.

You can read the full issue here.

I’m delighted that Like to the Lark has been highly commended in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. You can read the judges’ comments here.

Thanks to the judges — Kim Cheng Boey, Rico Craig, Felicity Plunkett — and to Terri-ann White and Upswell Publishing, and warm congratulations to the shortlisted poets — Pooja Mittal Biswas, Willo Drummond, Libby Hart, Caitlin Maling, Omar Sakr, Tais Rose Wae — and fellow highly commended poet Dominic Symes.

A pleasure chatting with Welsh poet Glyn Edwards about the duplex, the cleft phlox and ecology and sexuality for Modron Magazine’s #MoreThanHuman series. Thanks to Glyn for the wonderful questions and to Modron for publishing my ‘Duplex’ (Cleft phlox) and our interview.

You can read both here.

Thanks to Leo Boix, Kate Simpson and Ella Duffy for including my poem ‘pua o Te Rēinga’ (Māori for flower of Hades) in the Underworld issue of Magma Poetry, which features writing by Fiona Benson, Sean Borodale and Audrey Molloy, among others.

You can read the poem here and order a copy of the issue here.

I’m delighted my poem ‘God, the Sestina’ (with a nod to A.E. Stallings) has been shortlisted for the 2024 Blake Poetry Prize. 

Warm thanks to judges Simone King, Ellen van Neerven and Peter Ramm, to everyone at WestWords, especially Michael Campbell, and congratulations to fellow shortlistees Evelyn Araulen, Adrienne Eberhard, Coco X. Huang, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Kaya Ortiz, Alicia Sometimes and Mark Tredinnick. 

You can read the judges’ comments and the shortlisted poems and watch all the shortlisted poets read their work here. 

The winner and runner-up will be announced on May 18.

I’m tickled pink to be co-editing the ‘Queering Ecopoet(h)ics’ issue of Plumwood Mountain Journal with the brilliant Willo Drummond. We aim to gather a collection of poetries that ‘render strange’ essentialist, fixed notions of the natural world and in so doing get under the skin of ‘queer as a verb’ and as an ethical, ecological practice. Think kinship, dis-ease. Speak whole truths. Un-closet (and send us) your fabulousgorgeous queerings of the more-than-human world. Submissions close January 18, 2024. You can read the full call here.