The Essential Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts (1906-1993) was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Despite an itinerant childhood and an adult life spent primarily in the United States, her poetry remained rooted in her native land. The daughter of Theodore Goodridge Roberts and niece of Charles G. D. Roberts, she was encouraged by her family early on to write poetry. When she was twenty-one her first poetry chapbook, Songs for Swift Feet, was published under the pen name Gostwick Roberts. After years of raising a family and publishing short stories, she went on to write six more volumes of poetry, often featuring themes of nature, memory and the passage of time, with an emphasis on feelings of alienation and exile from her native land. Roberts died in Pennsylvania, her home for several decades, but was buried in Fredericton near the river she had loved since childhood.

Brian Bartlett has published seven collections and six chapbooks of poetry. He has also edited several poetry books, including earlier volumes in the Essential Poets series—The Essential Robert Gibbs and The Essential James Reaney—and the Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan. His recent prose work includes a book of nature writing, Branches Over Ripples: A Waterside Journal (Gaspereau, 2017) and All Manner of Tackle: Prose on Poetry (Palimpsest, 2017). His work has garnered numerous honours, including the Atlantic Poetry Prize, two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes, and the Acorn Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Since 1990 Bartlett has taught Creative Writing and various fields of Literature at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.