'In the Spaces between Stars lie Shadows' | ISBN 978 1 763653 061 | 36 pgs | September 2024 | $15
Poems surge onto the page, tempting the reader to recite each
one to savour the inventive and luscious, to feel the pulse and
rhythm of an observer, like Hopkins, noting his natural and
manufactured worlds of fragility and resilience fear and hope.
Emotion is palpable, the voice confident and mature in these
poignant, elegant reflections.
Julie Maclean
These poems ring to the sounds of love and destiny. Primarily
they celebrate all treasures of the natural world whilst at the
same time fearing for its future. They are sprinkled with
startling metaphors particularly calling on birds, beach and
the estuary. Their message allows us to hope.
Wendy Fleming
John Bartlett’s latest collection ranges from the universally
personal to the intimately global. This is a poetry of lyrical
intensity that brings together the elegiac and the erotic in an
unfolding of arresting images. Even at its most clear-eyed and
uncompromising, this moving collection looks to a time when
‘gentleness goes viral’.
David McCooey