Скачать или смотреть Ghazal: Too full of words by Matt Barnard

The Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2025 Entry

Poet’s Biography
Matt Barnard’s first full collection, Anatomy of a Whale, was published by The Onslaught Press and he also edited the anthology Poems for the NHS. In 2025, his poem ‘Two Boys at Midnight’ won second prize in the National Poetry Competition and he has also won the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Prize. He is currently working on his second collection of poetry as well as a first novel and divides his time between London and the Isle of Skye

Poem Description / Inspiration
This is a poem written in response to the tragic events in the Middle East. The poetic form ghazal is originally Arabic and the Hebrew version of name ‘Matthew’, which is referenced in the poem, means ‘gift of God’. Within linguistics, the term 'speech act' is used to describe a statement that doesn't just provide information but constitutes an action in and of itself.

Poem Text
The face of the woman weeping on the news is shaped
Like a leaf and her voice is a swollen river, too full of words.

Relatives call out the names of the lost and the unlost
And the world puts its hand over its mouth, too full of words.

Fear suffocates in the basement of a building,
The future spelt out in the ABCs of a news feed, too full of words.

At the assembly, so many people are speaking at once
It is like hearing all the voices of a nation, too full of words.

The lines in books that tell stories of the past
Are overprinted with the new laid on the old, too full of words.

And Matthew - 'gift of God' - what is your speech act?
Is poetry enough or are you, too, too full of words?