All Manner of Tackle brings together a selection of Brian Bartlett's literary prose from the past three decades. One of Atlantic Canada's finest poets, Bartlett has published reflections on poetry in a panoply of forms, including essays, reviews, journals, memoirs, tributes, columns, introductions, and interviews. All Manner of Tackle celebrates the Canadian poetry and poets he considers indispensible (including P.K. Page, Robert Bringhurst and Elizabeth Bishop), offering meticulous and in-depth readings that track poetry's relationship to everything from mass culture to philosophy to the environment. As much memoir as it is criticism, All Manner of Tackle is a book that keeps “a few kernels of faith in poetry as something that blazes trails rather than just doggedly follow[s] them.”

As a high-school student, Brian Bartlett was invited to join the Ice House Gang, so-called because they met in the University of New Brunswick's historic Ice House every Tuesday night to read their poetry and hone their talents. Amazed and delighted by Bartlett's gift for words, Robert Gibbs, Bill Bauer, Kent Thompson, and Alden Nowlan inspired him to become the accomplished artist he is today. He published his chapbook Finches for the Wake when he was only 18 years old. The next year, Brother's Insomnia was published as a New Brunswick Chapbook. Since this apprenticeship period, Bartlett has published six highly acclaimed collections: Cattail Week, Planet Harbor, Underwater Carpentry, Granite Erratics, The Afterlife of Trees, and Wanting the Day. His poetry has won Two Malahat Review Long Poem prizes, a fellowship to the Hawthornden Castle International Writers' Retreat in Scotland, and first prize in the 2000 Petra Kenney poetry awards. A talented writer of prose, Bartlett's essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in Books in Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, and Brick, as well as Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Anthology. A native of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Bartlett spent 15 years in Montreal, studying at McGill and teaching at Concordia. Today, he teaches creative writing and literature at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

Brian Bartlett's profile page