His work became increasingly experimental. It was published in widely available volumes by Fulcrum and Trigram, and in limited editions by Ted Kavanagh, Turret Books, and others. His sequence Brother Wolf in 1972 focused on the life of Thomas Chatterton, who would remain an important influence. In the same year he began working at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich as a conservator of paintings. He was particularly enthusiastic about the work of John Everett, whom he commemorated in poems collected in Odes. However, an interview with Eric Mottram recalls that working conditions were poor and MacSweeney worried about his eyesight, so that he returned to journalism in 1973. Luke Roberts has argued that MacSweeney's sequence Toad Church was much influenced by the Maritime Museum setting and by the work of French poets like Jules Laforgue and Arthur Rimbaud. MacSweeney married the poet Elaine Randell in 1973. Together they continued to edit Blacksuede Boot, publishing work by Prynne, Crozier, Ian Patterson, and Nicholas Moore. During this period, MacSweeney was much involved in the National Union of Journalists, participating in strikes in 1974 and 1975. This trade union work was reflected in the long poem Black Torch, an ambitious narrative, dialect work about miners' strikes, published by Allen Fisher's New London Pride Editions in 1978. He was also involved in the "Poetry Wars" around the National Poetry Society, supporting the Mottram-led experimental poetry faction. MacSweeney was briefly Chairman of the Society in 1977, leading the final walk-out over Arts Council Policy and the funding of Poetry Review. 1980s MacSweeney and Randell separated in 1979. Inspired by punk, MacSweeney began work on a series of "State of the Nation" Bulletins, including Colonel B, Jury Vet, Liz Hard, and Wild Knitting. These often violent and obscene works remain divisive. For Peter Riley, they are "the central disaster in Barry's career". Other critics, including John Wilkinson, Marianne Morris, William Rowe, and Luke Roberts, have argued for the political significance of this writing, as an attack on Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government and a response to the ABC Trial and forms of state violence such as the Falklands War and the Troubles. MacSweeney married for a second time in 1983, but was divorced soon after. He moved to Bradford in 1983, and was present as a reporter at the Bradford City stadium fire in 1985. His long work Ranter, based loosely on the ancient Irish Buile