About

Stuart Barnes was born in Tasmania, educated at Monash University, Victoria and lives in Queensland, Australia. His first book, Glasshouses (UQP, 2016), was awarded the 2015 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, commended in the 2016 FAW Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the 2017 ASAL Mary Gilmore Award. His second book, Like to the Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023), was awarded the 2023 Wesley Michel Wright Prize in Poetry, shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and highly commended in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.

Stuart’s poems have been awarded the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award, the Blake Poetry Prize, the Montreal International Poetry Prize and the Newcastle Poetry Prize, among others, and widely published and anthologised, including in Admissions: Voices within Mental Health, The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, Australian Book Review, Best of Australian Poems, Cordite Poetry Review, Griffith Review, Island, The Language in My Tongue: An Anthology of Australian and New Zealand Prose Poetry, Magma, Meanjin, Modron Magazine, The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology 2020, The Moth, Overland Journal, Plumwood Mountain Journal, POETRY magazine, Poetry Wales, Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry, Southerly, Westerly and The Weekend Australian Review. Other poems have appeared on Irish Rail and on goa and been commissioned for Alcatraz, Australian Poetry Journal, Dancing About Architecture and Other Ekphrastic Maneuvers, Flying Arts Queensland, Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours, Peril Magazine and Red Room Poetry.

Stuart’s guest-edited issues of Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain Journal and Rabbit, and judged various awards and fellowships, including the Tasmanian Literary Awards Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry, the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the Red Room Poetry Fellowship. From 2013–18 he was Poetry Editor of Tincture Journal.

Stuart, Nigel Featherstone, Melinda Smith and CJ Bowerbird are Hell Herons, a spokenwork+music collective whose first record The Wreck Event — described by Will Yeoman as ‘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’ — is available on Bandcamp and all major streaming platforms.