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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

More about #RomanOleksiv. In his father, Yaroslav's, words: "It's important to talk about it. You can't just be silent. We frequently go to Mom's cemetery, practically every other day. He comes, lights a candle, we sit for a while and go home. That is our life." www.rferl.org/a/children-w...

rferl.org

A Burned Boy's Recovery And The 'Unimaginable Suffering' Of Ukrainian Children

In 2022, a Russian missile killed Roman Oleksiv’s mother and left the seven-year-old boy with massive burns across his face and body. Three years and more than 30 surgeries later, he’s making friends ...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

What heart will not be stirred by Roman's searing testimony & his translator's response to it? When strength & compassion are conjoined in this way, we are reminded of the human goodness that must prevail in Putin's contemptible war against Ukraine This is, or should be, Ukraine's #AlanKurdi moment

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

This may be the strongest case I have ever seen ever made--unwittingly of course--against AI. It runs slightly ahead of the promotion of those odious robots that increasingly are being developed to provide companionship for seniors in care homes to save governments and private operators money.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Now, how can I print a copy of this post and leave it lying around somewhere in the house without looking obvious?

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Wendy Erskine @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

I am delighted to be on the Gordon Burn longlist because number one, I am a Gordon Burn nut, and number two the books I have already read on this list are brilliant. Thank you so much.

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Daniel Cowper @danielcowper.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Tsawassen and its environs! Please join @catwrites604.bsky.social and me for a reading tomorrow at 7pm, Nov 11th, at Albany books!

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

"...always aware of the human alchemy of writing and reading, how you let creativity flow in yourself and how the results land in the reader." Read the insightful @ruthpadel.bsky.social's tender paean to S. Heaney & the new Collected, out now from @faberbooks.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/d562...

ft.com

Seamus Heaney: a new glimpse of his life and poetry

With previously uncollected or unpublished works, a definitive edition deepens our understanding of the Nobel laureate’s creative process

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Perhaps the presence of a ghost qualifies a poem as "spooky" & worthy of posting on a rainy Hallowe'en? "You Have a Visitor, Sir" features Philip Larkin, a talking parrot called "Lickspittle," an undertaker called "Mr. Bottle"... Something for everyone.

From P.W. Bridgman, Idiolect (Ekstasis Editions, 2021)

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

"...My father removed The pope’s blessing and replaced it With his own. That might work Better for you, he said." From "Garnets," a spellbinding new poem by @tricialockwood.bsky.social in the latest issue of the @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Patricia Lockwood · Poem: ‘Garnets’

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

In time, Heaney confronted the Troubles with the full weight of his talent. (See esp., Station Island, section VIII). Other NI poets ably navigated the Odyssean challenges O'Toole notes--none better than Ciaran Carson in "Belfast Confetti" (here in his own voice). www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEI9...

youtube.com

Belfast Confetti read by Ciaran Carson (AQA Conflict Anthology)

YouTube video by Literature Today - and Yesterday...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

@fotoole.bsky.social on Heaney's initial reluctance to engage with the Troubles in his poems. "He resisted gut instincts that could not be transmuted into art, steering clear, like Odysseus, of both the whirlpool of propaganda and the monster of indifference." observer.co.uk/culture/book...

observer.co.uk

Seamus Heaney’s poems for a darkening age | The Observer

Collected in a landmark new edition, the late Irish writer’s work is attuned to wonder, replete with humanity and rooted in the tragedies of history

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Abridged @abridgedmagazine.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Coming in November. Don't Speak To Strangers. Our next series of Online Poetry Pamphlets. Featuring Moyra Donaldson, Scott McKendry, Alicia Byrne Keane, David Nash, and Lianne O'Hara. @artscouncilireland.bsky.social @poetryireland.bsky.social

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The London Magazine @thelondonmagazine.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

'I have my own poet’s preoccupations that come back to me more or less uncontrollably, which I then have to turn into something basically legible that someone else might be interested in.' Joint winners Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie in conversation: thelondonmagazine.org/interview-fo...

thelondonmagazine.org

Interview | Forward Prize for Best Collection: Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie - The London Magazine

Joint winners of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie discuss each other's collections.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Nothing less than recovering from the knee-replacement surgery I underwent ten days ago could keep me away from seeing Dan Bejar and Destroyer perform at the Vogue in Vancouver tomorrow night. Break a leg, Dan. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWg...

youtube.com

Destroyer - Painter In Your Pocket

YouTube video by chudslayerr

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Is there anyone who could read this poem aloud & not have his or her voice catch? Finding work like this sets me on an obsessive search for more writing by the poet. It's plain to me now. Gregory Orr deserves more of my attention than he has received. So the search begins. Thank you, Phillip.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

"No world, no meeting..." This poem, from Moon Crossing Bridge, perfectly transmutes a shimmering, crystalline Zen moment into language. My favourite Tess Gallagher poem. Nicely chosen, Phillip!

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

A new collection by @annajswan.bsky.social, entitled The Garbage Poems, has been released by Brick Books. This is big CanLit news! Anna's about to begin a cross-Canada reading tour. See the events page on Anna's website for dates & times. Vancouverites: 29 Oct, 6:30, Iron Dog Books annaswanson.ca

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Very much looking forward to this, Theresa. Your publisher (undoubtedly with guidance from you) has made very sound and aesthetically pleasing design choices. Your book will be a wonder, inside and out. Congratulations.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

I’m scheduled for knee-replacement surgery no. 2 on Oct 15 so I’ll only be making rare appearances here for a while. The procedure last Nov was surprisingly disruptive (although the outcome was excellent). Hoping for less of that & a return to better writing productivity. See you on the other side!

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

"...Sleep softly spirit of earth as the days and nights join hands when everything becomes one thing..." -- Al Purdy, "The Dead Poet" Made a pilgrimage yesterday to the Al Purdy sculpture in Toronto's Queen's Park--truly one of CanLit's secular stations of the cross. RIP AWP

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

"...'you're not in Ireland now.'" Such deep feeling in Martina Evans' reading of Eavan Boland's poignant childhood memoir, beautifully framed and filmed, as always, by @brinkerhoffpoetry.bsky.social. brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/an-iri...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

A year ago, Ars Notoria published my story, "The Assignment." It concerns capital punishment. The barbaric #deathpenalty persists in some jurisdictions because their citizens can look away. There's nowhere to hide here. Meet Jesse Nazaire & his executioner, Mr Bell. arsnotoria.com/2024/09/23/t...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

On the ineffable joy of being loved. @janezwart.bsky.social knows it and transmutes it into words worthy of their subject. Again.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

"Swanson’s poems articulate such lovely bricolage, stitching narratives as a collage of subject, accumulation & language, stitching narratives from found materials into reason, logic, story." From @robmclennan.bsky.social's review of @annajswan.bsky.social's latest. the-wood-lot.ca/2025/09/25/a...

the-wood-lot.ca

Anna Swanson, The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, Fall 2025)

lovingly reviewed by rob mclennan In Which We ReplaceGarbage With LoveThis place is famous for love, all brands& standards. We who come here know loveis a verb, & we love with open hands.On…

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

21st anniv. dinner with my beloved Lydia at L'Express--our fav. Montréal restaurant. The most authentic Parisian bistro outside Paris did not disappoint. We're off to Toronto on Sunday to prowl bookstores & see friends. This is the last hurrah before knee-replacement surgery no. 2, sched for 15 Oct.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

"I pick up my pencil. I wish I could call the place it comes to rest, the small and grooved knob on my fourth finger, a cradle but it is a callus..." Oh joy! @janezwart.bsky.social's pencil, sure & true, has wrought something for which we have all been waiting www.orisonbooks.com/product-page...

orisonbooks.com

Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best, poems by Jane Zwart | Orison Books

Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Bestpoems by Jane Zwart *available for pre-order* Orison Bookspaper / 74 pp. / $18.00ISBN: 978-1-949039-68-9Publication Date: February 3, 2026 ABOUT THE BOO...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Such a deserving winner of the 2025 Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection: Amelia Loulli for "Slip" (Cape Poetry, 2024). The poem Jan has chosen to feature in her post below (Epilogue for My Daughters) well shows why the accolade is so apposite. It is tender and fierce in equal measures.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Every one Paula Meehan plants flowers just this way. Little wonder then that this poem was chosen to meander all over London in subterranean tunnels, illuminating & brightening as it went, "../bless[ing] the power of sun / its conspiracy with the [U]nderground...".

"Seed," from P. Meehan, "The Man Who was Marked by Winter" (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 1991)

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Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

"Why can't you write the way people want?" Frank Beckett, in a letter to his brother (The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940).

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Jeff Young @wildtwin.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

TLS Ackerley Prize evening, July 23rd. 7pm. QR Code below for details: @littletollerbooks.bsky.social

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Wendy Erskine @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

am very proud of The Benefactors audiobook. I do the main narration but over 30 others - family, friends, strangers - recorded the 50 voices that form the book’s monologues. Most had zero experience. All were BRILLIANT. Thanks to @hachetteaudio.bsky.social www.thebookseller.com/news/hodder-...

thebookseller.com

Hodder & Stoughton assembles largest-ever cast for The Benefactors audiobook

Hodder & Stoughton has brought together its largest-ever cast for the audiobook of Wendy Erskine’s debut novel The Benefactors, a polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

So begins a series of reflections on the writing life by the self-effacing @danielcowper.bsky.social. Concerns that Daniel raises in Pt I are (perhaps inadvertent) boastfulness--something to be avoided--and the sometimes subtle distinction between embarrassment and disgrace. Looking fwd to more.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Unworthy? Catch yerself on, Donal! @donalohanlon.bsky.social's talent is legend across my beloved N.I. He's given public readings of my poems at Belfast's Linen Hall Library. He's recorded videos of my poems on YouTube, incl this one! Go raibh míle maith agat, Donal! www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SQV...

youtube.com

The Conversation by P.W. Bridgman

YouTube video by Donal O'Hanlon

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

The Bath Flash Fiction Comp is one of the best in the world. In about three hours the deadline will be reached. It's still not too late. I've tossed three hats into the ring this year so I'm hopeful but already preparing for disappointment (necessary expectation management for every writer).

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Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

A small found poem called “Lying in Wait”

A banana peel hiding in a corner of a brick wall.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

"...and then we were seventy and in-between, I was forty or fifty and losing sleep about growing old, although people said, you look so young, you’re always smiling, and then I was not smiling" @carlasarett.bsky.social begs to differ with the physicists who say time is just an illusion.

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Jane Zwart (she/her) @janezwart.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

I find it a little squirmy to list to recordings of my own voice, but if you don't have anything against my voice, you're welcome to listen to me read "All my life I was a bride married to amazement" over at Poetry: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

poetryfoundation.org

All my life I was a bride married to amazement

When death comes, final and novel— the trick cul-de-sac or burst dam, a door that opening erases or shutting disappears— I want to watch the filmstrip once more. When death comes, I want to watch, ree...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Read Belfast poet @purelypoetry.bsky.social's fine review of Cdn poet @nathanael73.bsky.social's "Terminals". In the terminal form--attributed to Australian John Tranter--"the final word of each line in a source poem us used as the end-word for each line of a new poem." A Houdini challenge for sure.

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Boris Dralyuk @bdralyuk.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Poets are pulled towards fixed forms by various forces. Not uncommonly, it is the need to harness, if not to tame, an unruly tangle of thoughts and sentiments. Result: a fine tension. In a late sonnet, Millay takes this as her theme. Recall also Bishop’s parenthetical “Write it!”

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Our dear friend Dana Cromie (on Instagram, @danacromie) has an art show with Ewan McNeil at the Pendulum Gallery in Vancouver. Its last day is 30 May. Called "Pattern Language," it features Dana's stunning, geometrically complex colour wizardry. Don't miss it! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVVZ...

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Jane Zwart (she/her) @janezwart.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

@senecareview.bsky.social is a journal I love, and I'm so grateful to @geoffreybabbitt.bsky.social for making a spot for three of my poems in issue 55.1 with work by a bunch of writers whose books I'm lucky enough to have on my shelves. Here's the one that clocks in at 99 words, "99."

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A dalmatian, an Arabian
night—to signal abundance,
you add one. To signal
almost, you take one away:

at the bris, an empty chair;
from the flock, the sheep
God goes off seeking;
of God’s names,
the silence that follows
the recitation
multiplying eleven’s small surfeit
by nine’s not-quite.

Or, if that is all too exalted:
from the wall, a bottle
before the song begins;
on the page, two nines,
they spoon, soon their time
will be up; on the page,
a cartoon: little End Quote
in his father’s suit,
cutting off the last word,
buying himself time.

Cover of Seneca Review 55.1: a salmon colored background for what looks like something between a sidewalk chalk fantasia and a quilt.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

1 of 2/ "...Witty, erudite, playful and poignant, Bridgman titillates on one page and dives deep into the human soul on another. A master of language and purveyor of wit, Bridgman also shows himself capable of rendering a narrative with judicious use of well-chosen details..."

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

"...Show me the history, if any, not set in a fragile empire. If any is not about dying, write me that one without embellishments and without rounding down." We ponder it in diffuse, muddled thoughts. @janezwart.bsky.social writes it--artfully and with laser-focused precision.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Many thanks to @carlasarett.bsky.social--a fine poet in her own right--for the searching & thoughtful interview published today in @newversereview.bsky.social. Thank you too to editor Steven Knepper for giving space in NVR's pages to my views about the writing process. substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

An Interview with P. W. Bridgman

Verse Novellas, Dialogue, Infatuation, Marriage

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

"... so the sun hangs down its veils, so the old verbs change their invocation and their mood..." -- Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, "The Litany" from The Sun-Fish (Oldcastle: Gallery, 2009)

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

"...There is a joy that helpless. I borrow it. I too have been loved more than makes sense." -- from "Used Benison" by @janezwart.bsky.social If you can say this, then you will know on your pulses that the grateful thought of it has never been better expressed. cah.ucf.edu/floridarevie...

cah.ucf.edu

Two Poems - The Florida Review

I know: people want roads. They want room

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

A mini-course in democratic fundamentals that it would behove Pres. Drumpf to take.

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