Matthew Barton lives in Bristol and works as a writer, translator, editor and teacher of poetry and creative writing. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and he has also been featured twice on BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please. Awards include BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year, a Hawthornden Fellowship, an Arts Council Writer's Award and second prize in the National Poetry Competition. Matthew Barton's previous collection of poetry, Learning to Row, was published by Peterloo in 1999.

Vessel
In this, his second full collection, Matthew Barton captures a range of shifting relationships, the connections and disconnections we have with each other, ourselves and the natural world. In vivid and subtly nuanced language he explores our often uneasy place in the scheme of things, and celebrates the tension between human frailty and endurance.

Poems
Nettles
Bell Ringers

Praise for Vessel:
'Like that of many fine craftsmen, [Barton's] writing is humble in its stance towards life, not in its achievement. He uses his considerable skills with rhythm, pitch and image not so much to transform things as to return them, with human value added, to themselves.'
- Philip Gross

'Matthew Barton... writes movingly, but with sharp perception, of the connections between friends, family, and lovers. Above all, he is alive to the natural world...making us reassess the place we live in.'
- Jane Griffiths