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P.W. Bridgman, Writer

@pwbwriter1.bsky.social

190 followers 170 following 190 posts

Vancouver writer of poetry, fiction, literary criticism & academic articles about the law. Lover of all things Italian & Irish. Most recent of five titles: The World You Now Own (2024); Idiolect (2021); & The Four-Faced Liar (2021). www.pwbridgman.ca

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Mar 13

“…[I]mpeccably detailed realist dioramas, drawn from various stages of life… It’s a warm, welcoming volume, keenly demonstrating both tonal range and worldliness”

Grateful to poet @shotscarecrow.bsky.social for his insightful assessment of my latest in London Grip.

londongrip.co.uk/2025/03/lond...

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 3d

La Grande Bellezza. One of the best films ever, IMHO. And a writer is at the centre of the action who's not managed to gain traction after one successful novel. (Life lessons...) The gorgeous cinematography captures Rome at its finest. www.imdb.com/title/tt2358.... (In Italian but with subtitles)

The Great Beauty (2013) ⭐ 7.7 | Drama

2h 21m | Not Rated

www.imdb.com

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 4d

The high note she hits in "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is worth the price of admission. We bought tickets hoping to see her once, years ago, but like Madeleine Peyroux, Teresa Stratas had a habit of often cancelling her concerts & she cancelled the one we hoped to see. Pity... she's brilliant.

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 6d

"...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

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 7d

"...'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 · 8d

Lovely, Phillip.

From our meanderings yesterday, taken during a short visit to Toronto.

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 8d

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...

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 8d

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

Jane Zwart (she/her) @janezwart.bsky.social · 8d

A ridiculous little run of luck on the poetry front this week.
Thank you, Jamie Poissant, for several benisons: giving this poem a spot in Aquifer & for nominating it for the Best of Net anthology.
And thank you, Dean Ward, for letting me borrow this sweet corn & pet moth.

A more accessible version can be found here:
https://cah.ucf.edu/floridareview/article/two-poems-16/

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 8d

"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...

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…

the-wood-lot.ca

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 12d

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.

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · 22d

"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...

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...

www.orisonbooks.com

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 27

Cheeky is good! Congrats, Eleanor.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 24

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.

Jan Carson @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social · Jun 23

Huge congratulations to Amelia Loulli, winner of the Heaney Prize for First collections for Slip and to all the shortlisted poets who read so powerfully this evening.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 21

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)

Reposted by P.W. Bridgman, Writer

Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · Jun 17

"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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Reposted by P.W. Bridgman, Writer

Jeff Young @wildtwin.bsky.social · Jun 17

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

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Reposted by P.W. Bridgman, Writer

Wendy Erskine @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social · Jun 16

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-...

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.

www.thebookseller.com

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 14

Well, you'd be welcome any time. (My wife Lydia and I also saw you at the Sonar in Vancouver in 2004--a handful of months before we were married.) Your music is still on regular rotation at our house. The writer in me loves your edgy lyrics.

I wish you well. Fingers crossed for a return to YVR.

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 13

Congratulations, Liam.

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 13

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.

Daniel Cowper @danielcowper.bsky.social · Jun 13

In which I make a fool of myself in a new way: Writing about Writing About Writing: an introduction to a series of essays I'll be posting on NVR over the next year or so.
newversereview.substack.com/p/writing-ab...

Writing About Writing; Embracing the Pratfalls and Possibilities

Letters from an Island 1

newversereview.substack.com

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 13

My copy is winging its way to me in Canada from No Alibis Bookshop in Belfast. Can't wait for it to arrive. Congrats, Wendy, on all the buzz the new book is causing.

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 12

Beautiful.

Most of us who are parents have told some of those, I fear.

From P.W. Bridgman, "The World You Now Own: New Poems and a Novella in Verse" (Ekstasis Editions, 2024)

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 11

How about a return to the Rio Theatre in Vancouver? We loved you the last time. We can promise you no National Guard or Marines on our streets, no *rump as the head of government, and a peaceable, working democracy!

P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 11

Sometimes.

"He always took me to the same place, a restaurant called the Old Chelsea, which was on the second floor of a building, looking down on Dundas Street. It had velvet curtains, white tablecloths, little rose-shaded lamps on the tables."

Alice Munro, "Wenlock Edge", The New Yorker, 2005

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

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...

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P.W. Bridgman, Writer @pwbwriter1.bsky.social · Jun 9

There's been no formal proclamation, but it's still very much "a thing". I learned about it because the maker of bubble wrap (and the holder of its patents and all rights to its name) was a client of mine when I was a lawyer. Pop it into your calendar!

www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day...

NATIONAL BUBBLE WRAP DAY | Last Monday of January

NATIONAL BUBBLE WRAP DAY National Bubble Wrap Day (also known as National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day) on the last Monday in January recognizes a fascinating