Simply Poetry with Burt Bradley
Channel: This House of Books
Date: 2020-04-10

Member-author Burt Bradley is a Wyoming poet who was scheduled to appear at the bookstore on March 14, 2020, but his public reading was cancelled due to the health concerns related to the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead, we recorded this reading from his book, After Following. We were delighted to find that as we edited the footage for this video our appreciation deepened the more we listened to the poems he presented here. Surely it is a sign of excellence when poetry bears such close examination.
After Following is a collection of poems inspired by what the author describes as poet whisperers: from Rumi to Kerouac, Ecclesiastes to Philip Levine, Emily Dickinson to Mary Oliver. These writers and numerous others’ lives and work serve as guides in shaping the poet’s ways of seeing and reflecting upon wildness in the world. The book describes the process a poet develops in his or her craft. Beginning with reading and learning from the masters, great and small, following in their footsteps, after which one finds his own path while acknowledging the mentors who served as his guides.
"Part creative homage, part séance in verse, these poems mostly salute the work of great poets.  Burt Bradley demonstrates versatility and skill of craft along with an imaginative vision that invites the spirit of these writers―from Walt Whitman to Pablo Neruda and beyond―enabling them to live again in a reader’s mind.  These well-sculpted poems in a variety of voices intrigue and delight." —David K. Leff, award-winning author and former poet-in-residence for the New England National Scenic Trail (NET)
Burt Bradley is a professor emeritus at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, where he taught Writing in the Wild classes in Yellowstone and the Southwest Desert.