Branches Over Ripples: A Waterside Journal

By Brian Bartlett. Kentville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2017.

Over two years, Canadian poet and amateur naturalist Brian Bartlett sat down beside various bodies of water (bays, rivers, streams, lakes, marshes, vernal ponds, waterfalls) to record his impressions, capturing both sensuous details of natural phenomena and reflections on his life and reading. Making a virtue of leisurely digression, Bartlett’s experiment in plein-air writing wanders beyond everyday personal journal-keeping into a meditation on the rich connections between the seemingly disparate experiences of our days, and on the enduring value of indulging our curiosity. Branches Over Ripples is a follow-up to Bartlett’s book of days, Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2014), a compilation of 366 paragraphs, one for each day of a year running from April 1 to the following March 31.