Phillip Barker

Hi and welcome to my site.​

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I'm a digital artist, musician and writer from Melbourne, Australia. I've been playing music, writing and dabbling in art for well over 45 years. All of it on a strictly amateur - not-for-profit - basis. Some people think it's time that changed and since becoming under-employed - I'm fast reaching the same conclusion. The need for food, guitar strings and pencils... what can I say?

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At various points around this site - and the others of mine I link to here - I'll provide ways to contact me. I'd love to hear from you - be STRANGER - but don't BE a stranger.

The following is an intro to me that my good mate Jo wrote an age ago when she arranged to have some of my work published. I have to say I don't agree with everything she says - but she's a New Yorker, living in Texas - she's tough - and she knows where I live. She bites and is possibly armed - so... she says to put this in, I comply.

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I'm asking Phillip to add this text to his "About" page. There are things he won't tell you.

A little background: In Australia, indeed in most of the English-speaking world, a busker is a street performer or street musician. People busk for a variety of reasons - for money, for fun, for attention, or to try out new material in front of an audience. In some of his poems, Phill relates that he (with guitar) has been a part of that group at various times, and has a great affection for those who live and busk in West Melbourne and around Victoria.

Phill (Soma) is a master musician and wordsmith. Never fond of glam and the high life, he is greatly put off by pretense. In conversation, he is hilarious, uproarious, outrageous and exhausting. I'm hard put to keep up with the turnings of his deep and fertile mind. A master of repartee, he will keep those in his presence well and forever entertained. As a history buff, he has a serious side which comes out in the writing and he will take you places you never imagined you'd go.

He is that rare poet who writes from genius, and reading him is akin to sitting in on toast, eggs and coffee with good friends at Jim and Mary’s joint in Smith Street, Melbourne, debating politics and solving all the world's ills. His poems are gravelly-throated but polished, squint-eyed yet empathetic, and in the end are about love and history, nurtured in and by the wide skies of Australia - even though they are greatly universal in theme. He can go dark as well, so dark the work has a light of its own. Lately, he has developed into quite a haiku spinner.

Over the years, Soma has posted a lot of his poems and art here and there online and has developed a huge base of lifelong fans and friends in the process. This is an artist not to be found among the fussy folk or with the fat-fingered chest-thumpers, either. Seek him out and read him; I guarantee a good ride. Buy his offerings! He well deserves a little support for his enormous efforts! It's just busking with a new shirt!

-- Jo VonBargen 2013 Texas USA