Over the last
decade, British writer John Barlow has become one of the world’s most
respected and best loved writers of haiku and tanka.
Haiku North America have described him as
one ‘of the best haiku poets writing in English’ and his awards from the
US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the UK further confirm the
appreciation of this man’s work.

Aside from writing exceptionally
poignant, delicate and often crushingly subtle haiku and tanka (examples
of which appear in his two collections, Snow About to
Fall and Waiting for the Seventh
Wave), John Barlow has also edited the tanka journal
Tangled Hair and the haiku magazine
Snapshots, as well as The Haiku
Calendar, which continues to delight readers and writers
of haiku worldwide.

It’s hard to imagine that this extremely hard
working writer and editor finds any time to leave his desk and turn his
attentions to the tranquillity of another of his passions – nature, and
particularly, birds. Yet, with the imminent publication of
Wing Beats with poet Matthew Paul and
photographer Sean Gray, John Barlow proves that his awareness and
appreciation of British bird life is finely tuned. Even within haiku, a
form of poetry that is traditionally engaged with the natural world, John
Barlow transcends convention to present what William J. Higginson calls
‘artistically moving and intellectually stimulating’
poetry.

3LIGHTS is enormously fortunate to present
The Bittern’s Neck, an exhibition of
bird-related haiku, tanka and photography, complementing the release of
Wing Beats. We’re grateful to John Barlow and
Sean Gray for giving us this opportunity to share with our readers a
remarkable encounter with haiku, tanka and the natural environment in
which these forms of poetry can thrive.

Liam Wilkinson, February
2008

John
Barlow

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