Poet Profile

Brian Bartlett

Brian Bartlett, who has lived all his life in eastern Canada, has published 7 collections and 7 chapbooks of poetry, as well as 2 prose volumes of nature writing and a book on poetry and poetics. He has also edited selected volumes by several Canadian poets, and Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan. He has published several haiku montages, including 3 honouring the greats of silent-screen comedy (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd). After 28 years at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, he retired from teaching in 2018.

Awards and Other Honors:

Atlantic Poetry Prize, Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, Malahat Review Long Poem Prize.

Books Published:

Books include: Underwater Carpentry (Goose Lane Editions, 1992); Granite Erratics (Ekstatis Editions, 1997); The Afterlife of Trees (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Wanting the Day: Selected Poems (Goose Lane Editions, 2003); The Watchmaker’s Table (Goose Lane Editions, 2007); Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar (Fitzhenry&Whiteside, 2014); All Manner of Tackle: Living with Poetry (Palimpsest, 2017); Branches Over Ripples: A Waterside Journal (Gaspereau Press, 2017).
Haiku collection and chapbooks: Being Charlie (Alfred Gustav Press, 2009); Potato Blossom Road: Seven Montages (Ekstasis Editions, 2013); Keatonesque (Thee Hellbox Press, 2017); Safety Last (Gaspereau Press, 2019.

    Reading slowly―splash
of blueberry wine soaking
    into ten-grain bread

    Flies plague a whale
carcass. Bright warblers
    pick them from the air.

     By the curb
in a broken baby carriage
    a book of Cubist prints

    Busking saxophonist’s lip
is split. He plays so gently
    it turns our heads

    When she winks to flirt
he pulls out his handkerchief
    to dab her eye clean

    He would win her heart
at the piano, but a goat
    eats the sheet music

Credits:

Potato Blossom Road: Seven Montages, (Ekstasis Editions, 2013).