AustLit

''... 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 ' (Publication summary)

'Young Turk, Furkan Dogan is pumped full of bullet holes, cut down by Israeli gunfire as he and his comrades try to break the Gaza blockade and draw attention to the Palestinian plight. He is only 19.

'An ageing poet pumps himself full of holes with a syringe of insulin to stave off his own demise - the death that came to Furkan too soon.

'The poet remembers not just Furkan's particular murder, but through it he laments the loss of his own beautiful youth. As he speaks to the dead boy through all time 'whenever that was', Barnett recalls his own passionate engagement with the world; his influences, political and cultural, and loves lost.

'In this solemn act of remembering, the poet pulls onto his shoulders the terrible weight of 'this world gone wrong' and bears it for us all.

'Continuing a tradition of Mayakovsky and Hikmet to read to people publicly 'to confront people more than to console them', this is a social poem to 'like' and 'share' mouth to ear.

'In a culture that longs for closure, this will leave all your doors hanging open.' (Publisher's blurb)