Brian Barker teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where he coedits the literary journal Copper Nickel. His first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors’ Prize and was published in 2006. Also the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2009 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize, Barker has published in a number of journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, American Book Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Indiana Review, and Pleiades.

Other poems by Brian Barker in Verse Daily:

Books by Brian Barker:

Other poems on the web by Brian Barker:
"Lullaby for the Last Night on Earth"
"Dog Gospel"
"Flood"
Three poems
"Love Poem for the Last Night on Earth"
"Elegy with a Mute Bell"

Brian Barker's Website.

About The Black Ocean:

"Barker creates a harrowing world threatened by the inescapability of its own complex, often dark history, a world on the brink of chaos and collapse. Though these poems are frequently dizzying and threatening, they are also distinguished by technical dexterity, sonic complexity, and a truly visionary sensibility. The Black Ocean confirms my belief that Brian Barker is one of the most ambitious and talented young poets at work in America today."
—Kevin Prufer

"'Death is the mother of beauty,' Wallace Stevens contended, and Brian Barker's lovely, heart- wrenching poems glow with the vision, the poignant vanishing light, of last things. They scroll down the page with a lyric grace, a sacred rage, a spooky, apocalyptic power, and a visionary gleam."
—Edward Hirsch

"From the commerce made of historical depredation to the fever dream of end times, Brian Barker plumbs to harrowing depths. Were the darkness unrelenting, it would be far easier to bear, and the poetry less courageous. These are not poems for the faint of heart. They are tribute to the cleansing power of the good hard gaze."
—Linda Gregerson