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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.
Brian Bartlett of Halifax is the author of six full-length collections of poetry, including The Afterlife of Trees (McGill-Queens, 2002) and The Watchmaker’s Table (Goose Lane Editions), winner of the 2009 Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. His Wanting the Day: Selected Poems, published in 2003 by Goose Lane Editions in Canada and Peterloo Poets in England, was honoured with the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has also edited volumes of selected poems by Don Domanski, Robert Gibbs, and James Reaney. In 2014 Fitzhenry and Whiteside will publish his first book of non-fiction prose, Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar.
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