Brian Bartlett's poetry fuses ideas, events, and emotions with subterranean dreams, compressing them until they turn to diamond. His passion for the physical is rooted in the spiritual, which in turn strengthens the grip of his poems on the natural world. Whether he is writing about a jazz drummer or a foot doctor, a vireo or a seal, a rundown hotel or an Adirondack mountain, humour and music enliven his lines.

A professor of literature and creative writing at St. Mary's University, Brian Bartlett (1953) won the 2000 Petra Kenney Poetry Competition. In 1997 he won the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize for the second time. He was born and raised in New Brunswick, and as an undergraduate at the University of New Brunswick, he was part of the circle of writers who gathered at "Windsor Castle," Alden Nowlan's home. Bartlett is the editor of Don MacKay: Essays on His Work (2003).