Barnett's volumes of poetry and short prose include collected
Poems &, collected
Translations,
Translations Addenda,
Lithos,
The Making of a Story,
Like Those of an Eerie Ruin,
Book Paradise: Spillikins (with drawings by Lucy Rose Cunningham).
Antonyms Anew: Barbs & Loves is a collection of critical essays. He was the publisher of the first edition of
J. H. Prynne’s collected
Poems (1982), and edited Veronica Forrest-Thomson's
Collected Poems and Translations (1990) and
Collected Poems (2008). Barnett's work is represented in the anthologies
A Various Art;
Poets on Writing: Britain, 1970–1991;
Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970; Cambridge University Press Contexts in Literature
Contemporary Poetry: Poets and Poetry Since 1990. His translations include
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa,
Anne-Marie Albiach,
Roger Giroux,
Pär Lagerkvist,
Tarjei Vesaas,
Andrea Zanzotto. Separate books of translation include
Osip Mandelstam,
Whoever Has Found a Horseshoe, with drawings by Lucy Rose Cunningham (2023), and
Elsa Morante,
Alibi, with paintings and drawings by Monica Ferrando (2024). In 2002 he was visiting scholar at the Center for International Programs, Meiji University, Tokyo. The lecture he gave there is published as
InExperience and UnCommon Sense in Translation. He co-edits and publishes the literary, music and arts journal
Snow lit rev (from 2013). His one-act play
The Literature Director, lampooning the British Council and the English Arts Council, written in 2012, was posted online in 2023 at
Fortnightly Review. == Music works ==