O Horsey

'... a work of raw, brutal power and of intense spiritual refinement, as visual and visceral as it is delicate and sensuous ... a tumult of battle for soul, for survival. All the while the sense is one of standing alongside the teller, listening as [the poet] proclaims what the edge of life and the threat of the void ahead most utterly feels like. Immense forces are ranged against the small, the human, the chances of victory seem forbidding, but all the while there is also an unyielding effort to wrestle them at least to a halt.' - Angelo Loukakis



'Barnett, like any great poet deserving of the title, is admired and loved for his revolutionary stance against regimes imposed on humans. Now, with Ô Horsey he deconstructs the regime of language, the regime of narrative, and of syntax itself. What results is the humanimal caught in the headlights, stripped naked and glorious.' - Brentley Frazer