Sebastian Barker

JSebastian Smart Barker FRSL (born 16 April 1945) is a British poet.

Life
Barker is the son of George Barker and Elizabeth Smart.

He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, Corpus Christi, Oxford (MA) and at the University of East Anglia (MA).

He was on the executive committee of P.E.N. and was the Chairman of the Poetry Society from 1988 to 1992. In 1997 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2002 he took over editorship of the London Magazine, which he resigned from in 2008 after the Arts Council England had cut the magazine's funding.

His earlier collections, which include On the Rocks (Martin, Brian & O'Keeffe 1977), and A Nuclear Epiphany (Friday Night Fish Publications, 1984) were brought together in a volume of selected poems, Guarding the Border, published by Enitharmon Press in 1992. More recent collections include The Dream of Intelligence (Littlewood Arc, 1992, a long poem based on Nietzsche’s life and works), The Hand in the Well (Enitharmon, 1996), Damnatio Memoriae: Erased from Memory (Enitharmon, 2004), and The Erotics of God (Smokestack Books, 2005).

In August 2010 Barker contributed to an eBook collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State edited by Alan Morrison