Mike Barlow
![A wooden sculpture hung on an old blue wooden plank door. The brown, roughly heart shaped and has a light blue circle in the centre crossed with what look like laces.](https://thefridaypoem.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/A-Land-Between-Borders-by-Mike-Barlow-Templar-320x225.jpg)
Holiday in Barlovia
Matthew Paul reviews A Land Between Borders by Mike Barlow (Templar Poetry, 2023)
![A round yellow ball with two eyes and a big smile.](https://thefridaypoem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Yellow-round-ball-320x225.jpg)
This barter of enthusiasm 3
Mike Barlow, Helena Nelson and Martin Figura choose favourite funny-serious poems by e. e. cummings, Mark Halliday and Peter Howard
Smiley yellow ball photograph by Chaitanya Pillala on Unsplash
Smiley yellow ball photograph by Chaitanya Pillala on Unsplash
![Slightly abstract painting in block colours, Yellow, beige, green, grey, sky blue, representing a building, the sky with a sun or a moon and a single window. oh, and some bricks](https://thefridaypoem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Hotel-Anonymous-Cover--320x225.jpg)
Whichever life we live, it’s the other calls
Carl Tomlinson reviews Hotel Anonymous by Mike Barlow (Pindrop, 2021)
![Two books with mostly white covers. one cover has a blackened rib, the other a small picture of a blue open door](https://thefridaypoem.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Wayleave-2-320x225.jpg)
Essential poetry from Wayleave Press
Richie McCaffery reviews two Wayleave Press pamphlets — Rib by Sharon Black and After by Jane Routh
![The Friday Poem 'Hotel Anonymous' by Mike Barlow](https://thefridaypoem.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Hotel-Anonymous-320x225.jpg)
Hotel Anonymous
by Mike Barlow — Someone in the room next door / is practising the oboe, those clear / woody notes going over and over / the same bars, never finding perfection, / never satisfied but reminding me / of one particular