Birds Knit My Ribs Together

what if / I actually – am – a bird / my cupped hands / opening to release me… Phil Barnett's relationship with birds is so close that his poetry blurs the distinctions between himself and the birds – a kind of ornimorphology where rather than giving the birds human characteristics, the reverse happens, and he imagines himself as a bird. Phil Barnett is a photographer, writer, musician, artist and naturalist, who has a passion for the birds that kept him company through a long hard illness. His photography and poetry have quite a following on social media, which is where we found him, on

The Daily Haiku. His skill as a photographer leads to an acute visual sensibility, and his slow recovery moves from a tick sheet his mother had to fill in for him, to extraordinary poetry – full of wit and wonder and spectacular language.