Over the past thirty years, Don McKay has created one of the most original bodies of work in contemporary English language poetry. From the early collections Air Occupies Space and Lightning Ball Bait to the recent books Apparatus and Another Gravity, McKay has combined a curious, patient eye with an acute, arresting ear. His poetry overflows with details of ornithology, botany, weather, industry, books, and music. Geographically it ranges from southwestern Ontario to the St. John River valley to the seascapes of Vancouver Island. It blends nuanced description and complex metaphor, philosophical phrasing and folksy idiom, madcap humour and elegy. The contributors are Stan Dragland, Robert Bringhurst, John Oughton, Louis MacKendrick, Christopher Levenson, Don Coles, Sue Sinclair, Barbara Colebrook Peace, Margo Wheaton, Kevin Bushell, Susan Elmslie, Ross Leckie, Ken Babstock, and Brian Bartlett.

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.

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