While throughout his life he has been a committed and passionate reader of poetry, P.W. Bridgman is, by admission, an outlier and an unruly (if not ungovernable) latecomer to the writing of poems. In the words of Vancouver’s former poet laureate, George McWhirter, he is an “open, free-agent versifier”. Less bounded than most by convention, Bridgman writes poems which have drawn favorable comment and praise for their boldness and originality, both as to form and content. P.W. Bridgman was first a writer of short fiction and this fact is reflected in his leaning toward narrative poetry—a leaning that is again evident in the work that comprises Idiolect. These new poems aim to explore love, loss, happiness, sorrow and redemption. They seek to provide glimpses of both our better and lesser selves, often in circumstances where character and belief are tested by life events. As critic and fellow poet John Swanson observed when reviewing Bridgman’s first book of poems (A Lamb, published in 2018), Bridgman’s poetry “sings to our sorrows, cloaks our mysteries, celebrates the fierceness of our young love and the joy of appreciative love that survives and grows later in life.”

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P.W. Bridgman writes from Vancouver, Canada. He has previously published two books of short fiction—a selection of short stories entitled Standing at an Angle to My Age (Libros Libertad) in 2013, and a selection of short stories and flash fiction entitled The Four-Faced Liar (Ekstasis Editions) in 2021. His first collection of poems, entitled A Lamb, appeared under the Ekstasis Editions imprint in 2018.