Amidst the tapping of fine rain on moss, leaves, twigs & logs, light bells are ringing here & there. A Junco flits up & down branches of a young spruce rooted in a nurse stump: white bordering tail-feathers flick against its grey. What insects stir within the wood rot? Bells inter�spersed with the subtle rain: those clear voices from all four corners of the compass. Each nurse stump deserves a Junco singing.
In his first book of prose, distinguished Canadian poet Brian Bartlett offers a book of days, a daily diary from spring to spring. In the tradition of John Clare's notebooks and letters, Henry David Thoreau's Walden and his voluminous journals, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Bartlett looks out at his local surroundings with a poet's eye for detail, his ear attuned to the ringings of the natural world. Grounded in Nova Scotia, but reflecting travels further afield to Alberta, Nebraska, New York City and Ireland, the entries take on the qualities of field reports, sketches, commentaries, tributes and laments, quotations and collages. Over 366 daily entries, Bartlett shows that the resonance between human life and nature is there waiting to be heard.

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

"While to most of us the idea of dailiness does not correspond to exciting or even, necessarily, to interesting, this is where Bartlett shows us how patient observation proves the obverse: if we only look, as he does, there is much every day to see in the world. . . Bartlett's skill results in polished, and frequently inspired, parts."
— Arc Poetry Magazine