Double book launch

Bookmark, Charlottetown’s independent bookstore, will welcome Nova Scotia poet Brian Bartlett and New Brunswick poet Michael Pacey to Charlottetown for the double launch of their new collections on January 28 at 7 pm. The event takes place in the Beaconsfield Carriage House.  

Brian Bartlett’s eighth collection of poems, The Astonishing Room, is one of the strongest in his long career. Those who love his poetry already will be happy to find Bartlett’s acute observations, wit and structural variety on full display. The Astonishing Room can be thought of as a long conversation with mortality and death. Whether set by seashores or in forests, a lawyer’s office or an antique shop, Bartlett’s book surprises us with its capacity for facing hard truths, as well as for celebration and gratitude.

 Michael Pacey’s Van Gogh’s Grasshopper is a collection of 50 poems about insects and other very small creatures. The new book contains odes to insect beauty, the amazing feats they perform and their ultimate mystery. Each poem focuses on particular aspects of a specific tiny life form: their name and what it means, their overall design and structure, the superstitions we have about them, and their particular strategies to survive. The book is bound together through this narrow focus and the result is a most unusual and fascinating collection of poems.

 Bartlett has published sixteen collections and chapbooks of poems, along with three volumes of nature writing and a gathering of prose on poetry. His work has received The Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, and two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes. After long periods living in New Brunswick and Montreal, Bartlett moved to Halifax/Kjipuktuk in 1990, and taught for three decades at Saint Mary’s University.

Pacey has been a fixture of Fredericton, NB’s literary scene for more than 50 years. Two of his recent poetry collections were shortlisted for the Fiddlehead Prize at the annual New Brunswick Book Awards. More than 100 of Michael’s poems have appeared in Canadian literary magazines, and his poems have twice been recognized in the Best Canadian Poems in English series.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.