A Land Between Borders
£12.00
The 2022 Straid Collection Award is A Land Between Borders by Mike Barlow
Zoom Launch - Thursday 24th August 2023
Carole Coates & Mike Barlow
Review by Matthew Paul HERE
You may listen to several poems | click links at the foot of this page
This fine collection is about spaces between – between borders, histories, emotions, belonging and not belonging. Sometimes direct, sometimes enigmatic, the poems often evoke events, states of mind or moments in which the familiar and predictable are displaced by the uncertain and ambiguous.
“there are two horizons, each with a flag of convenience
there is a road but you never seem to be on it
the grain of the air rubs your second skin raw
the ground’s criss-crossed by the tracks of travellers
coming and going in search of their souls”
Mike Barlow has won prizes in a number of competitions including first prize in the Amnesty International (2002), Ledbury (2005) and National (2006) Competitions. His first full collection, Living on the Difference (Smith|Doorstop 2004) won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection. His pamphlet Amicable Numbers (Templar 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice.
Listen to a short selection of poems below - click on individual titles
In the Land Between Borders
Doorkeeper
My Uncle Ivan
In the Sheltered Community of the not-yet-conceived
