Jeff Barbee of Burlington has seen his share of heartbreaks and uses poetry to provide readers with a glimpse into his anguish.
Barbee, 52, spends his nights at the homeless shelter run by Allied Churches of Alamance County. It’s a place he’s called home for the past six weeks. Barbee suffers from bipolar disorder.
Barbee began writing poetry when he was a student at Williams High School. He has written hundreds of poems through the years and published some of his poetry last March. Barbee’s “Outlaw Poet” published by Publish America is available for sale online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
Barbee described “Outlaw Poet” as a collection of poetry and prose that runs the full gamut of poetry dealing with religion, darkness, manic depression and death. It tells the personal story of Barbee’s life, loves and confusion.
“It’s my memoirs,” Barbee said. “It tells about my life.”Barbee said the first half of the book contains mostly positive poems about life with darker works in the second half of the book. Barbee said his bipolar disorder drives him to write at night.
One of Barbee’s favorite poems is “Mistress Moon.” He begins it with “Oh, my sweet loving Mistress Moon.” The poem ends with “My sweet loving Mistress Moon the morning always comes to soon.”
Many of Barbee’s poems are written to women he has known. Through all of Barbee’s life trials, poetry has been constant. He says he’s worked about 17 different jobs since he graduated from Williams High School in 1977, including at Burlington Industries. His most recent job was working in food services at Elon University, where he stayed for about seven years.
Today, his top priority is to find housing. Barbee said he appreciates the help that Allied Churches has provided him while living at the homeless shelter. Barbee said the public has the wrong impression about people living at homeless shelters. Barbee said all of them aren’t drug addicts or lazy, as some might believe. Many people who are living at homeless shelters face hard times because of the recent economic downturn or physical disabilities out of their control, Barbee said.
“Some people have nowhere else to go in this economy,” Barbee said. Barbee said he would continue to write poetry during the evenings at the shelter. He spends most days at the library, where he feels most comfortable around books.
Six weeks ago Publish America published Barbee’s second book, “Outlaw Poet Book Two: Eclecticism,” now available online as well. Barbee said he is also working on two novels.
Barbee said he looks for inspiration from such poets as William Blake, Emily Dickenson, Victor Hugo, Edgar Allen Poe, Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman. His favorite poet was Massachusetts native Sylvia Plath. Plath committed suicide in February 1963 in London at age 30.