Glasshouses

A beautiful and sophisticated collection of poems. Drawing on a number of complex techniques, the manuscript presents a deeply poetic sensibility at work. Judges’ comments, 2015 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize

Barnes is compelling, imaginative and dramatic … a major poet in the making; watch this space! Judges’ comments, 2016 Anne Elder Award


Man moves in a world made of things, beings and events. And things, beings and events move in the mind of man. Living in this half-transparent state triggers poetic reactions, strong and beautiful poems like the ones you’ll find in Stuart Barnes’ Glasshouses. Sjón

Glasshouses is the brilliant nest for Stuart Barnes’ meticulous bowerbird poetics; as readers we become the curious mate, charmed by his architectural wisdom. A vision trained on a vast expanse of literary and cultural phenomena permits the crafting of intelligent centos, transformations and interventions in modern living. These are political, compelling poems, assembled with heart; they will never harden to stone. Jessica L Wilkinson


Wonderfully inventive. Wow! aj carruthers

Impress[ive]. Mix[es] inventiveness with accessibility. Nigel Featherstone

A complex tessellation of formplay and style; an uncomplicated expression of how humans overlap; fantastic. Robert Lukins

Not to be read once and discarded, but to be kept by the bedside, to be dipped into at will again and again as the mood takes you; a collection to wonder at; poems to arouse your curiosity. Cass Moriarty

A complex but compelling collection that captures joy, pain, beauty, darkness and adventure, sometimes all at once. Sally Piper

Glasshouses is a delicate and powerful collection of poetry. Barnes is a talented writer with a distinct poetic voice, and [this book] — in all its fragility and curiosity about the world — is a triumph. Holden Sheppard


‘Barnes does not stand still, and neither do the poems in [Glasshouses], whose vividness seems to leap from the pages.‘ Alexis Late, Cordite Poetry Review

‘Barnes is a master of the recurring image. [His] often cryptic poems challenge the reader to make meaning out of them. [Glasshouses‘] lines at once seethe with the fire of passion and glow with the warmth of compassion. This is powerful poetry.‘ Alison Clifton, StylusLit

‘Glasshouses is a luminous example of what can be done within an array of poetic forms. [This] this collection is so much fun to read that I can easily imagine myself returning to its pages again and again.’ Joseph Schreiber

‘Glasshouses is a powerful debut full of tight craftsmanship, and decentred, multi-vocalled poems that combine a temporal urgency and emotional drama with rhythm, form, structure and a creative ‘‘uncreativity’’ that is both delicate and powerful.’ Magdalena Ball, Compulsive Reader

‘Stuart Barnes’ Glasshouses is clearly composed of discrete poems. Nevertheless, there are a number of unifying elements, in particular his emphasis on form. [In] Glasshouses the sonnet is only one form among many that Barnes plays with, [but] the poet [he] most resembles is perhaps not Shakespeare or any of the other sonneteers of the sixteenth century but rather (to me, at least) Hart Crane.’ Stephen Guy-Bray, ‘Sonnets and Para-Sonnets’

‘Where Barnes’ [Glasshouses] poems may appear conventional, close readers will find within them lists that weave and materialize experience. As a carefully compiled whole, [these] poems do not only reflect experience but are experiences in themselves. They do not engage by way of commentary, but through a controlled formation of the environments that demand the reader’s intellectual investment.’ Timothy Ogene, Harvard Review Online

‘[Glasshouses] is personal, playful and musical.’ Tony Messenger

‘[H]umming away below the often dazzling biographical bricolage and heuristic gymnastics is a unique poetic sensibility which delights in those dissonances produced by being an Australian working in a European tradition. … Glasshouses — by turns playful, subtle, moving, witty and outrageous — is a major achievement.’ William Yeoman, The West Australian