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LETTING IN THE CARNIVAL
Poems by Alex Barr
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Alex Barr was born in Manchester in 1940 of Scottish parents. His childhood interests were literary, artistic, and aeronautic, but while at Manchester Grammar School he took a notion to become an astronomer. Finding at university a lack of aptitude in physics (and also flying), he first turned to journalism (becoming, at the zenith of his career, wire editor of the Wichita Beacon), and then, at 27, to architecture, becoming an architect in 1974. He has taught on the Architecture and DipE courses at Manchester Polytechnic.
Letting In The Carnival is his first published book and contains poems written over a period of twenty years. Poems within the collection have appeared in leading journals such as Poetry Review and in several of the annual (New Poetry) anthologies published by the Arts Council.
Alex Barr has also written a play, Futures which was broadcast on Radio 4 in 1985, and a puppet play, Tom Thumb, commissioned by Theatre Grotesque. In 1980 he won first prize in the Piccadilly Radio Children’s Short Story Competition.
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Augurs
Rain. Off to rendezvous down the ginnel.
What are the auguries? A signal’s
what I need.
No flowers to unpick: ‘She loves me not/
she loves me’. Only, at my feet,
rain-loving creatures.
This worm’s aglow, red neon looped
into some unfamiliar script
I’ll never read.
This beetle, stiff, polished, serious,
hurries in case I commandeer his
scarlet dispatches.
This snail’s on course two-zero-nine,
aerials taut with bulletins
I’m not receiving.
R minus one. Uncertain features
loom. Time-skewered, I salute such creatures:
damp and thriving.
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LETTING IN THE CARNIVAL
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: Georges Rouault, “Nous croyant rois” (und halten uns fűr Kőnige) from “Misere”, 1922-1927. Courtesy of Museum Ludwig, Kőln.
Publication: AUTUMN 1984 (56 pages laminated paperback)
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