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Poetry Canadian

Potato Blossom Road

by (author) Brian Bartlett

Publisher
Ekstasis Editions
Initial publish date
Nov 2013
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771710190
    Publish Date
    Nov 2013
    List Price
    $22.95

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Description

Potato Blossom Road is a book of seven haiku montages, immediate as a series of crisscrossing paths through a forest. Ranging from an uninhabited small island and Elizabeth Bishop's childhood house to the streets of Halifax and the films of Charlie Chaplin, these gatherings of haiku are alternately observant and intimate, succinct and expansive, subtle and full of vitality. They offer echo-chambers of images, events, and words. Brian Bartlett concludes his collection with a personal essay about reading and writing haiku, challenging some common assumptions about the form.

About the author

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