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“Barn Owl” Introduction
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"Barn Owl" was published in 1975 by Gwen Harwood, considered one of Australia's greatest poets, and has been widely taught and anthologized since. The poem, written in the first person, tells the story of an act of rebellion: the speaker's murder of a barn owl with their father's stolen gun. The poem uses vivid imagery, powerful symbolism, and carefully-chosen language to convey the brutal circumstances under which the speaker loses their innocence and comes of age. The poem is the first section of a two-part piece called "Father and Child."
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“Barn Owl” Summary
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At dawn, the whole family was asleep. I woke up early, and the morning sun felt like approval. A devilish mischief-maker, I snuck out of the house with my father's gun. Let him dream of me as a rule-following, perfectly-behaved child.
That old tyrant, my father—he was asleep and therefore powerless to stop me. I knew where to find my prize: the owl who flew home in the morning, eyes burdened by the daylight, back to his favorite spot on a rafter in our family's old stables.
There he'd sleep the useless light of day away. I stood in the hay that smelled like urine, trying not to breathe, feeling like the commander of life and death. I may have had a child's wispy hair, but I was the judge whose ruling would punish the vicious barn owl.
My first gunshot hit the bird. He wobbled, destroyed but still alive, flapping his one remaining wing. I looked on, suddenly afraid of the gun that I let fall to the ground. I was just a child, all alone, a child who had thought death was orderly and definitive, nothing like this horrifying sight.
The unrecognizable body fell from the beam and bled all over the loose straw, getting tangled up in its own guts, hopping blindly closer to me. I saw, in the owl's sightless eyes, my own cruelty mirrored back at me.
The destroyed bird, which could not stand the light but could not hide away either, staggered in its own blood. Suddenly, my father was at my side, handing me the gun I had dropped. "Finish what you started," he said.
I fired the gun. The owl's blind eyes lit up one last time, meeting mine, and then he died. I buried my face in my father's arm, and sobbed, blind with tears, like the owl, as the morning sun continued to rise, crying over everything I had done.
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“Barn Owl” Themes
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Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence
“Barn Owl” captures a pivotal moment in a child’s coming of age. The speaker, hoping to prove they are no longer a mere rule-following child but rather a mature “master of life and death,” shoots a barn owl with their father’s gun. To the speaker’s shock and horror, however, the violence they inflict on the owl only serves as a reflection of the speaker’s own immaturity and leads to a painful loss of innocence. The poem closes on an image of the speaker weeping for what they have done to both the owl and themselves, illustrating the danger and tragedy of a child trying to grow up too soon.
The speaker is clearly impatient to grow up, characterizing themselves as a “horny fiend” bent on rebellion against their father—that “old no-sayer,” who is asleep when the speaker steals his gun and sneaks out of the house to shoot a barn owl. At first, then, the speaker only views the barn owl through the prism of personal ambitions. The owl is described as “my prize” and symbolically depicted sitting “on a high beam,” an implicit comparison to a pedestal. In short, the owl is the perfect target for the speaker, who sees themselves as “a wisp-haired judge whose law / would punish beak and claw.” The owl’s perspective as a living thing is entirely ignored in favor of the speaker’s desire to dominate the owl and prove themselves powerful and grown-up.
After the first shot, however, the speaker swiftly realizes they have made a mistake. The shot fails to kill the owl, leaving the speaker to face the cruelty of their violent actions, watching, "afraid" as the owl “sway[s], / ruined / beating his only / wing.” Confronted with this terrible violence, the speaker realizes they are not grown-up at all, but rather “a lonely / child [...] who believed death clean” up until that terrible moment.
As the poem goes on to describe, the speaker’s attack on the owl is anything but clean. The wounded owl “dribble[s]” its bowels across the straw, and “hop[s] blindly closer,” a “wrecked thing.” In the owl’s dying eyes, the speaker sees a reflection of “my cruelty,” recognizing how terrible their actions really were. Ironically, this recognition indicates the speaker has gained a newfound maturity—but not in the way the speaker imagined.
The sound of the gunshot must wake the speaker’s father, for he appears, hands the speaker “the fallen gun,” and instructs his child to “End what you have begun.” Here, the poem suggests that by making the speaker put the bird out of its misery, the father is holding the speaker accountable for their actions, just as he would a fellow adult. In other words, the speaker has been granted their wish: to be treated like a grown-up.
The speaker, however, is still a child, and like a child, after shooting the owl to death, “lean[s] my head upon / my father’s arm, and we[eps…] / for what I had begun.” This final line can be read two ways: as the speaker weeping over their murder of the owl, but also as the speaker mourning their loss of innocence. In a rush to grow up, the speaker has indeed triggered their own coming of age, but now possesses the wisdom to understand what a tragic mistake it was to leave childhood behind so soon.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Death and Mortality
“Barn Owl” opens with the speaker, a child, setting out to shoot an owl in order to prove their maturity. From the start, then, the poem links death and coming of age. The speaker is blithely unaware of this connection at first, however, naively believing death to be “clean / and final” and seeing their attack on the owl only as an opportunity to prove themselves. When the speaker is confronted firsthand with the wounded bird, however, they learn the hard way that death is in fact painful and messy, an “obscene” horror linked to suffering. Though the speaker does indeed gain newfound maturity, it is not the powerful adult identity they expected, but instead the brutal discovery of the dark reality of death.
As befits the speaker’s initial innocence, death is not mentioned explicitly in the first half of the poem. Only after the speaker shoots the owl, but fails to kill it, does death make an explicit entrance. The speaker drops the gun, “afraid,” and describes themselves as, until that moment, “a lonely / child who [had] believed death clean / and final.”
Of course, death is anything but clean here, and the speaker is now confronted with death’s gruesome reality: the wounded owl becomes an “obscene / bundle of stuff that dropped, / and dribbled through the loose straw / tangling in bowels, and hopped / blindly closer.” Only now does the speaker realize how truly horrifying death really is.
When the speaker’s father forces the speaker to put the owl out of its misery, the speaker weeps—not only for the dead owl, but for themselves, having realized for the first time how messy and painful death can be, and how cruel it was to inflict that horror on another living creature. Ironically, by gaining insight into death in this painful fashion, the speaker does indeed move closer to adulthood. But because the speaker has learned this lesson by confronting death so vividly, the speaker is now also newly aware of their own mortality—an essential, but challenging, part of growing up.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Humanity Vs. Nature
At the heart of “Barn Owl” is a conflict between the poem’s speaker, a human child, and an owl, a creature of the natural world. The speaker sets out to shoot the owl for sport and personal gain, but fails kill the owl with the first shot. In the face of the owl’s suffering and gruesome wound, the speaker suddenly realizes that human dominance over the natural world is not a given—and moreover, that trying to assert such dominance is wrong.
The poem makes the speaker’s familiarity with the natural world clear from the start. The speaker rises at “daybreak […] blessed by the sun,” and is familiar enough with animal habits to be certain that they will find the owl sleeping in “his place on a high beam / in our old stables.”
Nevertheless, despite this comfort and familiarity with the natural world, the speaker still views it as a thing to be dominated and destroyed. As a human being, the speaker casts themselves in the role of “master of life and death,” and sees their job as “punish[ing] beak and claw.” Though this description of the owl implicitly recognizes the owl’s own strengths, the speaker nevertheless believes themselves dominant over even this powerful creature.
As soon as the speaker shoots the owl, however, they realize they are wrong. The speaker describes the owl as “ruined,” implicitly acknowledging that they have defiled what was a beautiful natural creature. And having previously seen themselves as above the owl, the speaker now recognizes the bird as an equal, stating that the owl’s eyes “mirror my cruelty,” one living thing looking on another.
By the poem’s conclusion, the speaker’s confidence in their human dominance over the natural world has come to an end. The speaker’s father orders his child to “end what you have begun,” and the speaker fires another shot to put the owl out of its misery. Then the speaker weeps, clearly regretful of what they have done, ultimately condemning their human urge to want to destroy nature just because they felt they could.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Barn Owl”
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Lines 1-4
Daybreak: the household ...
... my father's gun.From its start, "Barn Owl" is a poem marked by tension and high stakes. Three of the first four lines are interrupted by caesura—in the first line's case, immediately after the first word, "Daybreak." These interruptions build anticipation, especially that first colon, which suggests an emphatic declaration or decision, creating the sense that the speaker of the poem is on a mission. And indeed, the speaker, introduced here via the first-person, is certainly up to something. The speaker is described as a "horny fiend," creeping out of the house at dawn while the rest of "the household" sleeps—armed with their "father's gun."
This ominous hint of violence is further emphasized by the poem's language, particularly its use of consonance. The hushed sibilance of repeated /s/ sounds evoke the speaker's caution as they sneak out quietly with the stolen gun. Likewise, the sharp /pt/ sounds at the end of "slept" and "crept" have a sharp but sneaky quality. The alliterative /f/ sounds linking "fiend" and "father" sound fierce, again hinting at violence or wrongdoing.
At the same time, however, the speaker's actions suggest they are unaware of the sense of dread hinted at by the poem's language. In fact, the speaker sees their actions as "blessed by the sun," metaphorically interpreting the early morning light as a sign of approval.
The neat rhyme scheme of these first four lines—"slept" and "crept," "sun" and "gun"—likewise feels safe, orderly, and ultimately affirming. This mixture of ominous and upbeat poetic devices suggests that the events of the poem are more complex than the speaker realizes. In particular, the striking symbol of the gun insists on readers taking this moment seriously—even if the speaker does not yet.
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Lines 5-8
Let him dream ...
... by sleep.
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Lines 8-13
I knew my ...
... useless time away. -
Lines 14-18
I stood, holding ...
... beak and claw. -
Lines 19-22
My first shot ...
... the fallen gun, -
Lines 22-24
a lonely ...
... not this obscene -
Lines 25-28
bundle of stuff ...
... blindly closer. -
Lines 28-33
I saw ...
... its own blood. -
Lines 34-36
My father reached ...
... you have begun.' -
Lines 37-38
I fired. The ...
... mine, and slept. -
Lines 39-42
I leaned my ...
... I had begun
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“Barn Owl” Symbols
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Light and Darkness
Throughout "Barn Owl," light and darkness symbolize life/youth and maturity/death. For starters, the poem opens at "daybreak," as the speaker awakes before anyone else and describes themselves as "blessed by the sun." The speaker is clearly young and full of vitality, with a long life ahead, all of which becomes linked with the morning sun and the light that the owl, a nocturnal creature, "[can]not bear."
Unlike the owl, the speaker is invigorated by the bright morning light; their eyes are not "day-light riddled" but rather focused on "my prize" asleep on the high beam. Light is not "useless" to the speaker but rather an opportunity to achieve their goal. Owls, meanwhile, are closely linked to darkness even beyond the events of this poem, since they are creatures that hunt at night and "dream light's useless time away" during the day.
The speaker gets their wish, and in return for shooting the owl and gaining new maturity, is introduced to darkness and death. The poem closes by describing the speaker as "owl blind in the early sun," weeping with regret for the suffering they have caused the owl, and for the hard lesson they have just learned about life and death. This mixed metaphor of both dark and light captures exactly where the speaker is in life: young as the "early sun," with many years left to live, but newly older and wiser, "blind" like the owl now that they have confronted the dark reality of death.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Daybreak”
- Line 2: “I rose, blessed by the sun.”
- Lines 9-10: “swooped home at this hour / with day-light riddled eyes”
- Lines 12-13: “dream / light's useless time away.”
- Lines 16-17: “master of life and death, / a wisp-haired judge”
- Lines 27-29: “hopped / blindly closer. I saw / those eyes that did not see”
- Lines 31-32: “ the wrecked thing that could / not bear the light”
- Lines 37-38: “The blank eyes shone / once into mine, and slept.”
- Line 41: “owl blind in early sun”
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Eyes and Sight
Eyes and sight play an important symbolic role in "Barn Owl." Throughout literature, vision and sight are often linked with knowledge, but interestingly, "Barn Owl" flips the popular associations with this symbol on its head. Here, the owl—a bird associated with wisdom—is described as blind and unable to see, while the speaker, who can see, is foolish and immature, using their sense of sight toward violent, selfish ends. The speaker's sight thus becomes associated with ignorance and hubris, with a kind of misguided overconfidence in one's knowledge of the world. Blindness, meanwhile, comes to represent genuine wisdom and maturity, guided by an awareness of how little one actually knows.
The speaker begins the poem feeling confident in their superiority to the owl, which finds the light of day "useless" (because owls are nocturnal creatures). The owl's eyes are unaccustomed to daylight, making it effectively blind when the speaker approaches it. Just because the speaker can see more than the owl, however, doesn't mean that the speaker understands their surroundings any better.
Later, when the speaker is faced with the horrific damage they've done to the owl, they can only "watch, afraid," their eyes suddenly put toward new purpose: soaking up some fresh wisdom and maturity. The vivid imagery used to describe the wounded owl—"obscene / bundle of stuff that dropped, / and dribbled through the loose straw"—takes up five lines, suggesting that the speaker is unable to look away from the harm they've done. What's more, the speaker looks upon the owl and sees "those eyes that did not see / mirror my cruelty," suggesting that the owl's blinded state serves as a reflection—and condemnation—of the speaker's own hubris and misguided ambitions.
Unsurprisingly, the speaker is a changed person by the close of the poem. As the owl dies, the speaker says that its "the blank eyes shone / once into mine, and slept," describing one final connection between the speaker and the bird that seems to impart some of the owl's wisdom upon the speaker. No longer able to bear witness, the speaker instead leans their "head upon / [their] father's arm," and weeps, for what they have done and "what [they have] begun"—the painful process of growing up, and seeing the world—and themselves—more clearly.
The poem describes the speaker as "owl blind," emphasizing the symbolic link between blindness and knowledge. The poem suggests that real maturity is tied to knowledge and awareness, in this case, the speaker's new awareness of their immaturity and ignorance at the poem's start.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 8-11: “ I knew my prize / who swooped home at this hour / with day-light riddled eyes / to his place on a high beam”
- Line 21: “I watched, afraid”
- Lines 27-33: “hopped / blindly closer. I saw / those eyes that did not see / mirror my cruelty / while the wrecked thing that could / not bear the light nor hide / hobbled in its own blood.”
- Lines 37-38: “The blank eyes shone / once into mine, and slept.”
- Lines 39-41: “I leaned my head upon / my father's arm, and wept, / owl blind”
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The Gun
The gun in "Barn Owl" symbolizes both power and adult responsibility. Importantly, the gun does not belong to the speaker—it is the speaker's "father's gun," and must be "crept out with" in secret while the speaker's father is fast asleep—but the fact that the speaker is so eager to use it reflects the speaker's deep desire to grow up. And carrying the gun does, at least at the beginning, make the speaker feel powerful: like a "master of life and death," transforming the weapon, in their eyes, into "law" that will "punish beak and claw."
But when the speaker finally does shoot the owl, and fails to kill the bird, they do not react in a mature or adult way to the terrible wound they have inflicted. Instead, the speaker drops the gun to the ground. When face-to-face with the reality of the "obscene" violence a gun can produce, the speaker is no longer powerful, but instead "afraid" of the weapon they have just used. In other words, the speaker is not an adult, and suddenly realizes they are not ready to live up to the adult responsibility that carrying a gun implies.
The gunshot presumably wakes the speaker's father, who arrives on the scene and hands the speaker "the fallen gun," instructing the speaker to put the bird out of its misery. Of course, the father, to whom the gun belongs, is more than capable of doing so himself. By forcing his child to perform the deed, however, the father explicitly demands that his child live up to the adult responsibility that they themselves claimed by stealing and using the gun—however difficult the speaker finds it. In doing so, the father helps to facilitate his child's coming of age, reinforcing the implicit link between power, adulthood, and the gun itself, while underscoring the danger of trying to grow up too soon.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 3-4: “A horny fiend, I crept / out with my father's gun.”
- Line 7: “robbed of power”
- Lines 16-18: “master of life and death, / a wisp-haired judge whose law / would punish beak and claw.”
- Lines 19-22: “My first shot struck. He swayed, / ruined, beating his only / wing, as I watched, afraid / by the fallen gun,”
- Lines 34-36: “My father reached my side, / gave me the fallen gun. / 'End what you have begun.'”
- Line 37: “I fired. ”
- Lines 40-42: “wept, / owl blind in early sun / for what I had begun”
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“Barn Owl” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is a subtle but importance presence in "Barn Owl." In the first three stanzas, fleeting moments of alliteration add sonic interest to the poem and suggest a relationship between certain words. The shared /f/ of "fiend" and "father," for example, reflects the close relationship between the speaker and parent in the poem—a relationship also reflected later by the alliteration of "obedient" and "old nay-sayer." Later, the plosive /p/ of "power" and "prize" reflects the speaker's belief that shooting the owl—that "prize"—will be a reflection of the speaker's own power over the natural world.
In the fourth stanza, when the speaker shoots the titular barn owl, the alliteration really takes off. The /s/ of "struck" and "swayed" draws attention to the way the speaker's actions affect the innocent bird, while the fricative /f/ repeated in "fallen" and "final" captures the speaker's shock and horror in response to the owl's wound (this sound is also repeated in the stressed syllable of "afraid," which can thus be considered alliterative as well). The repetition of the /w/ sound in "wing" and "watched" underscores the child's inability to look away from what they have done.
In the fifth stanza, alliteration also dominates, creating a kind of sonic claustrophobia that captures the speaker's sense of being overwhelmed and frozen with horror. Hard /b/ sounds throughout suggest the speaker's thumping heartbeat, while the repetition of /dr/ sounds in "dropped" and "dribbled" sonically resembles the dripping guts that the speaker describes falling out of the owl. The double /m/ sound in the last line emphasizes the speaker's reluctant but honest ownership of his cruelty:
bundle of stuff that dropped,
and dribbled through the loose straw
tangling in bowels, and hopped
blindly closer [...]
mirror my crueltyWhen also considering consonance, these lines become even more claustrophobic, with /b/, /d/, and /l/ sounds tangled thickly throughout.
The following stanza similarly uses multiple instances of alliteration to draw attention the owl's wounds. The imagery throughout these three stanzas is vivid, almost painterly, but nevertheless horrific—and the alliteration makes it almost impossible to look away. Each repetition of the same sound hammers home the brutal picture of the wounded bird.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 2: “blessed by”
- Line 3: “fiend”
- Line 4: “father's”
- Line 7: “power”
- Line 8: “prize”
- Line 14: “holding ”
- Line 15: “hay”
- Line 19: “struck,” “swayed”
- Line 21: “wing,” “watched,” “afraid”
- Line 22: “fallen ”
- Line 24: “final”
- Line 25: “bundle ,” “dropped”
- Line 26: “dribbled ,” “straw”
- Line 27: “bowels”
- Line 28: “blindly,” “saw”
- Line 29: “those ,” “that ,” “see”
- Line 30: “mirror my”
- Line 32: “bear ,” “hide”
- Line 33: “hobbled ,” “blood”
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Imagery
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Asyndeton
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“Barn Owl” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Fiend
- Horny
- Angel-mind
- Old no-sayer
- Riddled
- Obscene
- Bowels
- Hobbled
Fiend-
(Location in poem: Line 3: “A horny fiend, I crept”)
Devil; person of great wickedness.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Barn Owl”
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Form
"Barn Owl" does not follow a conventional poetic form. That said, it is a highly regular poem composed of seven six-line stanzas (creating a total of 42 lines). Each stanza ranges from six to seven syllables in length, and the majority follow a consistent rhyme scheme. This regularity gives the poem a kind of formal cohesion that mirrors the way in which the speaker of the poem, a child, views the world: "clean," orderly, and predictable. At the same time, the frequent enjambment between stanzas subtly undermines the poem's structure, suggesting that things are perhaps not as orderly and predictable as they may appear.
The poem also alludes to the form of the dramatic monologue, since the speaker takes on the voice and perspective of a child and narrates the poem's events in the first-person. (That said, there is no specific listener being addressed, which is typically one of the hallmarks of the dramatic monologue form.) The poem's intimate first-person voice, prone to speaking in long and descriptive sentences, is one of the most compelling aspects of "Barn Owl." The poem's regular form and structure provides a sturdy scaffolding against which the use of monologue is able to shine, leaving readers with the sense of looking in on a unique and deeply personal moment in the speaker's life.
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Meter
Despite its very regular stanzas (all seven of which are all six lines long), the poem lacks a consistent meter. Each line is about the same length, made up of six or seven syllables, but these don't break up into any steady metrical pattern. As such, the poem sounds controlled yet conversational, never becoming overly formal or stiff.
Instead of meter, the poem relies on frequent enjambment to create momentum and rhythm. Most sentences in the poem run from one line and even one stanza to the next, creating a sense of the lines marching inexorably forward. There are also some lines in the poem that, while still not part of an overall pattern, have interesting metrical moments. "My first shot struck" in line 19, for example, and "I fired" in line 37 each feature powerful, short syllables, and their sound evokes the shock of a child firing a gun for the first time.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Barn Owl" uses a very consistent rhyme scheme—one that occasionally mimics the rhyme scheme of a sonnet (though not always). Generally speaking, most stanzas in the poem follow this pattern:
ABABCC
Note that each stanza uses its own end rhyme sounds, rather than repeating the sounds of earlier stanzas. For example, here are the rhyme sounds of stanzas 2 and 3:
[...] power A
[...] prize B
[...] hour A
[...] eyes B
[...] beam C
[...] dream C[...] away. A
[...] breath, B
[...] hay, A
[...] death, B
[...] law C
[...] claw. COccasionally, the poem uses slant rhymes, ending in similar—but not identical—consonant sounds, to achieve its rhyme scheme. This happens in the first stanza with "child" and "mind," as well as in the sixth—which sacrifices a perfect rhyme for "could" in order to use the powerful word "blood" to convey the horrific harm the speaker has inflicted on the owl:
while the wrecked thing that could
not bear the light nor hide
hobbled in its own blood.On the whole, the consistent rhyme scheme echoes the straightforward, predictable way that a child, like the speaker of the poem, views the world. However, in moments like above, when slant rhyme is deployed, the poem uses that broken rhyme scheme to hint at the child's coming-of-age, and the important role this moment plays in helping the speaker to see the world is not as orderly or predictable as they once believed it to be.
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“Barn Owl” Speaker
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The speaker of "Barn Owl" is the child at the center of the poem, who decides to shoot a barn owl with their father's gun. While the poem is based on Gwen Hardwood's own childhood, it's not necessary to read it as being autobiographical. The speaker's identity is largely undefined beyond this singular moment: the poem itself does not make clear what the speaker's gender or exact age is, nor does it tell readers where the speaker lives, or what era they live in. However, the past tense of the poem does imply that the speaker's story is a recollection, a memory from childhood being retold. Thus the poem, and the speaker's first-person voice, is weighted with a wisdom and insight that the child, at the time captured by the poem, does not possess.
This gap allows the speaker of the poem to shed mature light on the child's horrific behavior, even as the speaker also gives readers glimpses into the child's immature mindset at the time. For instance, the speaker describes themselves as a "horny fiend," a characterization that suggests the speaker's maturity, looking back on their misbehavior and rightfully describing it as fiendish, or devilish. In the following line, however, the speaker shares the rebellious thoughts going through their mind at the time, when they were a child and saw themselves instead as a brave rebel: "Let him dream of a child obedient [...] old no-sayer, robbed of power / by sleep."
This same nuanced characterization carries on throughout the poem, allowing the speaker to describe themselves in the same breath as "wisp-haired," or childish, as well as a "judge / whose law would punish beak and claw." Likewise, the distance between the adult speaker and the child in the poem allows the speaker to acknowledge that they were, in fact, just "a lonely child who believed death clean" until the moment in the poem when they shoot the owl.
Much of the power of the speaker's mature voice comes from the fact that the poem—and the speaker—describes the very moment when that maturity began to develop. It is because of the child's foolish and rebellious decision to shoot the owl (and their father's insistence that they be held accountable for it) that the speaker has the wisdom to look back on this moment and recall it as a pivotal turning point in their coming of age.
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“Barn Owl” Setting
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The poem is set in a rural area. The speaker's family has "old stables" on its property and lives close enough to wildlife that a barn owl would seek refuge there. The poem also clearly takes place on a specific day in the speaker's childhood, at "daybreak" as the speaker rises before the rest of their family to go shoot the owl. The shooting itself takes place in those aforementioned stables, where the hay is still "urine-scented" and "loose straw" carpets the ground, catching the owl when it falls from the "high beam" where it had gone to sleep all day.
Beyond these specifics, the poem does not indicate the larger context of the poem's setting. It is not clear where this rural area is located, or during which era the poem takes place, although it is modern enough that the speaker's father owns a gun.
Based on the poet's identity, readers can perhaps conclude the poem is set in Australia, perhaps even in the suburbs outside of Brisbane, where Gwen Harwood grew up. These suburbs were in fact largely rural or exurban, rather than fully developed as suburbs, in the 1920s and '30s when she lived there—the sort of place where "old stables" would not have been uncommon.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Barn Owl”
Literary Context
This poem is actually the first section of a two-part pieced titled "Father and Child," published as part of Harwood's Selected Poems in 1975. The second section of this piece, "Nightfall," depicts the same characters from "Barn Owl" much later in life, with the now-middle-aged speaker reflecting on the father's looming mortality.
Gwen Harwood is considered one of Australia's greatest poets, and is one of the best-known figures in 20th-century Tasmanian poetry. Born in 1920 outside of Brisbane, she moved to Tasmania with her husband, a university professor, in 1945. Though Harwood wrote poetry for many years prior to publication, her work was not regularly published until the 1960s. Having struggled to find publication opportunities, she often used male pseudonyms.
Harwood's early years were spent on a citrus farm and she remained fascinated with the natural world throughout her life, as is evident throughout her work. Much of her poetry is deeply rooted in the unique natural spaces of Tasmania, or, as with "Barn Owl," inspired by her rural upbringing. However, though Harwood's work frequently explores the personal impact of natural phenomena, her poetry resists the personification of nature common to traditional Romantic or pastoral poetry. Instead, Harwood's work positions the natural world as fundamentally "other" to humanity, a distinct and separate entity providing opportunities with which to wrestle with larger philosophical themes, like life or death.
Harwood was active in the 1960s through the 1980s, publishing over 420 works and receiving considerable acclaim for her poetry. In fact, Harwood’s mark on the literary landscape in Australia was so influential that one of the country’s highest poetry prizes is named after her. During her lifetime, she was awarded the Grace Leven prize, Robert Frost medallion, Patrick White literary award, and a fellowship from the Australia Council. In 1989, she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia. She passed away in 1995, but in 2005 was inducted into Tasmania’s Honour Roll of Women.
Historical Context
Harwood was writing during a turbulent but exciting time in Australian history. The 1960s through the 1980s saw the rise of the feminist movement; rapid population growth, in part due to changes to the White Australia Policy and increasing immigration; advocacy for racial equality, including the 1967 referendum in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to recognize Indigenous Australians as citizens; and a growing interest in and concern for environmentalism and conservation.
Harwood's work reflects this era of rapid change. Certainly her poetry's attention to the natural world speaks to and reflects growing national awareness of Australia's unique environment and the need to protect it. In addition, much of Harwood's work deals with feminist themes, a fitting topic given the immense changes in women's rights and roles over the course of her life. Though Harwood spoke movingly about her childhood, calling it a "golden time" in her life, even her poetry inspired by her rural upbringing resists nostalgia or sentimentality. Her work's unflinching representation of the full range of human emotion reflects a keen understanding of the complexity of the modern world, including humanity's relationship to nature.
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More “Barn Owl” Resources
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External Resources
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Texts in the City: Collected Poems of Gwen Hardwood Harwood — Watch a talk about Harwood's poetry.
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More Poems About Childhood — Check out a short essay on and compilation of poems about childhood.
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"Barn Owl" Aloud — Listen to a reading of "Barn Owl" by the poet Bonny Cassidy.
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Gwen Harwood's Biography — Read all about the poet's life and work.
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Owls of Australia — Learn more about Australia's native owls, including the barn owl.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Gwen Harwood
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