On the Other Side, Water Lilies, by Bridgette Leigh

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

On the Other Side, Water Lilies, is a chaotic mix of light and dark poems spanning Bridgette’s life. Death, divorce, nightmares, new attractions, negative self concepts, early childhood trauma, and then love, the afterlife, reincarnation and prayer. This collection aims to embody that transcendent beauty which blooms out of the mud, symbolized by the water lily.

Poems take place in settings based on Bridgette’s travels and residences, like Hollywood and Sacramento, California. Honolulu, Hawaii. Then towns in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, Brazil. Even Vermont, where she attends poetry retreats at the Ruth Stone House. She regularly workshops her poetry with the Ruth Stone House to improve her craft, both in weekly sessions and annual retreats. This is Bridgette’s second chapbook, published by Bottlecap Press.

Bridgette Leigh is a writer, artist, meditator, vegetarian, animal and nature lover, poet and singer songwriter currently living in New Jersey. She frequently works and plays in New York City, just across the Hudson River. Since 2024 she has been working on music as a natural outgrowth of her poetry, and released her first album of original songs, titled Go So Deep. She has been a practicing meditator since the early 2000s, focusing on Vedic mantras and philosophy, and her late husband, Hari Lila das, from Brazil was also in the same spiritual line. After his death in 2010, she moved to New York, remarried and divorced, and obtained her BA in English from Hunter College in 2019.