12 or 20 (second series) questions with Shannon Bramer

Shannon Bramer writes poems, plays and short fiction. She is the author of Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children, illustrated by Cindy Derby, and several poetry collections for adults, winning the Hamilton and Region Arts Council Book Award for her first book, suitcases and other poems. Shannon’s plays include Chloe’s Tiny Heart Is Closed (for children) and The Hungriest Woman in the World. In 2020 Book*hug press published TRAPSONGS, a collection of Shannon’s plays. Robot, Unicorn, Queen, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher, is out this month with Groundwood Books. She lives with her family (and two beautiful old cats) in Toronto, Ontario.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

It's a little bit of both at this stage; poems always start with a word or a line or a voice stuck in my head, but once a few have arrived I usually notice something tying all the little pieces together and an idea for a book happens.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love giving readings; I am always exceedingly nervous about the before and after (small talk and socializing!) because I am on the shy side, but something happens when I occupy my work and have an audience--it's electrifying and so much fun. Readings always help me refine poems as well. I often read to test audiences (the kids I work with!) and learn where things work rhythmically, emotionally and also where things land (or don't!) in terms of the humour in my poems.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Editors are amazing and essential. Editors are attentive to details, they ask important questions, they push you to see your work from different angles. I have also found that having an editor helps a writer unpack and articulate why they might make certain choices. I've been blessed with incredible editors over the years: Alana Wilcox, Jen LoveGrove, Nan Froman and last but not least, David Derry, my husband--who is one of the best writers and toughest editors out there!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Travel--you have to travel, Shannon. My Nana Bramer always said that. And I think she's right; and I've tried to do that both on and off the page.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (general poetry to poetry for kids)? What do you see as the appeal?

I think having children and working with children means that I am immersed in a world of language and conversation and observations that I am always internalizing. I love kids as much as I love poetry. I love listening to them, I am dazzled by their ideas, sensitivities, bravery, humour--so I love trying to make them laugh, feel, and think with poems. I want to help them see themselves, how beautiful they are, how funny, how much they teach the adults. They are not always easy to impress, so writing poems for them is a delightful and thrilling challenge.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of your childhood?

Cigarette smoke! My mama is a long-time smoker of many cigarettes.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

All of the above for me! I get a little obsessed with something--a variety of mushroom, or a painting, or a song or an artist--and I will pour my heart into finding out as much as I can about it/them. The obsessions often lead to poetry.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There are so many writers that have been important to me over the years; I have a few close friends who are writers and I am so grateful for the ways they inspire me and also cheer me on when I need it. My husband, Dave, is the most important, to be honest. He knows when I'm not working enough on my writing I can get very down; he pushes me through those slumpy phases.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Practise mandolin consistently and learn how to play more than one song!

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I love writing and I have needed writing my whole life. Like most writers I have always done other things alongside writing. I am a mother of three, I work in a nursery school, I teach poetry, I've been a lunchroom supervisor and a bookseller. I am also a passionate cook; cooking is a kind of poetry for me and when I'm cooking I become hyper-focused in the same way that I do when I'm writing poetry.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen by Hannah Che. The recipes are as beautiful as the stories and photography in the book. The first one to come to mind is Little Orphans, written by Newfoundland playwright and filmmaker, Emily Bridger and directed by Ruth Lawrence. It's a love letter to St.John's, and explores what it means to show up, as mother, as a friend. It's an austere but tender film that broke my heart.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I'm working on the edits for a new book of poetry for young audiences, forthcoming in 2025. It's called Nightmare Jones and I am so excited about it because it will be for slightly older kids. There's scorpions and monsters and lots of spiders in this book. All the best things.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #21: Shannon Bramer

The twenty-first in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Toronto poet Shannon Bramer.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer and Washington DC poet Buck Downs.

The whole series can be found online here.

Shannon Bramer, precious energy

THE TOY

            after Emily Dickinson

My life stood in corners until

you made us a new home

for playing. At first

I called you owner. You

scolded and commanded me

to be a real friend.

You took me to your room.

You took me to the woods.

You taught me to hunt

soft animals and turn all rabbits

into small coats for our cold hands.

Now I’m so obedient. I smile for you.

I guard your sleeping head.

We share a pillow. Your enemies

are mine. I had none before.

Even a flower

I could hurt now, for you.

Toronto poet Shannon Bramer’s latest trade poetry collection is precious energy (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2017), and is her fourth collection overall, as well as her first in over a decade. Through her assemblage of short lyric narratives, it is lovely to be reminded of what first struck me about her poems in the first place—back to the poems in her first collection, suitcases and other poems (Toronto ON: Exile Editions, 1999)—the ways in which she writes with such intimacy, and deliberate smallness, in a collection that includes breastfeeding, weddings, birds, collaboration, children, mothers, dreams and cancer.

There has always been an unusual quality to Bramer’s poems, one that isn’t easy to describe, whether part dream, part fairy-tale or simply the haze of parental exhaustion. Perhaps the closest answer is, in fact, all of the above, articulating the sharp clarity of a dream that begins to fade as soon as it gains its focus. Who else could write a triptych of poems on towels? As her poem “Precious Energy: A Triptych” includes: “My towels, on the other hand, look like the towels / of someone who has given up. […] I’d rather buy some expensive wine / and drink that and forget about whatever it is I think / I might want.” Her poems are elusive, yet grounded, achieving a kind of magical state that exists between the familiar elements of the domestic blended with the dreamy electricity and dark spaces of fairytales. As she writes in the poem “The Land of Thieves”: “Children steal the bodies / of their mothers; marriages steal doors and closets. A new love / will steal from an old one, the way a cat eats birds, without remorse / or self-consciousness. The story steals the poem.”

EN ROUTE TO THE LAKE WHERE HIS FACTORY

HAS POISONED EVERYTHING

I get on an empty bus and the woman driving the bus

is Anne Carson. She winks at me

when I board so I sit up at the front

to watch her drive.

Ongoing notes: early March, 2010;

March, lions and lambs. Spring. Where does the time go, exactly? I’m hoping you’ve read the new issue of ottawater by now (thanks to Todd Swift, who recently gave it a nice nod, ). Apparently some places are noticing a few things I've been up to lately, including my new University of Alberta title, such as here and the Edmonton Journal (and this photo of Pearl & Brian Pirie going through such). Will I see any of you at my forthcoming Dusty Owl reading, as I launch it and that second novel (we won't even talk about how I'm forty in two weeks...)? Already plans in the works for a further Art Bar Reading in Toronto on August 10^th, myself, Sandra Ridley (with her first book by then) and Marcus McCann.

Toronto ON: Part of what I’ve always kept my eye open for have been those rare appearances of a new publication by Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, author of the trade collections suitcases & other poems (Exile, 1999), scarf (Exile, 2001) and The Refrigerator Memory (Coach House Books, 2005), as well as the chapbook poem(s) on the stairs (above/ground press, 2002). Newly out is Be Mine (subtitled “poems for you know who,” BookThug, 2010), published (as the colophon tells us) “in February 2010 so that the author may hang around in coffee shops in the west end of Toronto selling love to raise money for the victims of Haiti.” (I can only hope there’s enough love to go around).

Love Poet’s Lament

Once upon a time the editors said please don’t

send us any Poems about Poetry –

Please don’t send us your Love Poems – Now all the

good Poems are about Poetry but they still

Reject Poems about you know what – they

all say no or nope – We don’t

go for this kind of thing you don’t

have what we’re looking for right now. You should go

take this somewhere else (or) try us again

in the future. Keep writing.

Be hopeful.

A lovely little collection, I quite like the smooth lyric she’s been crafting over this past decade or more, and books for and/or about love have certainly become unfashionable, as far as the “serious writer” is concerned (treated worse, I’d say, than “humour” in poetry). Bramer, though, manages one that’s comfortable and more open, in a blending, almost, of her own sensibilities with the sentiment of iloveyougalleries author/curator Sharon Harris; why does it have to be so rare for a (serious) poem to be so open? I mean, what happened to the lyric love poem, forced to go into hiding, buried under other means, whether sly irony or undercuts? I celebrate Bramer, not only for this, but for a graceful publication of fine poems. Where (else) is the love?

A Love Poem with Soft Shoulders

I’m vanishing inside Love.

They warned me it would happen.

The shoulders are so personal to me,

you may not touch other shoulders.

Kissing is more important tonight

when the clock ticks me, licks me.

Don’t talk like that, girl.

I can’t change because this is how I Love.

Men will eat you up, she said men

do not want to be followed around.

I’m sneaking up on top of you tonight.

I’m planning on waking you, okay?

Like a puppy I am your puppy I am here

to kiss you I am here to put my nose in –

Like a mouse I’m chewing up your private

papers I’m eating up this sheet music –

If a woman serves? If a woman lets him

dominate her life she will be Sad.

Don’t be so hungry all the time or

you will get fat for him, FAT!

Don’t open your mouth, girl.

Don’t tell him how you want it.

Vancouver BC: Another chapbook after three trade poetry books is from BC poet Jacqueline Turner—author of the ECW poetry collections Into the Fold (2000), Careful (2003) and Seven into Even (2006)—her latest publication, The Ends of the Earth (Vancouver BC: Nomados, 2009).

so much to say

now that you/we are

not listening all

receptors broken

where one at a time

does not even make

sense because you/we

can type and talk

at the same

moment and drive and

give birth and fuck while

cleverly composing where

arms should rest to look

good for later your/our

integrated absences somehow

complete as

penciled in words

disappearing margins (“Integrated Absences”)

Turner writes of endings, ends, continuations and new beginnings, often concurrently. Turner’s poems in this small collection are all about perspective, it seems, turning, twisting and morphing. When is an end an end, and not? Who is the perspective, exactly, being written for, or from?

open form virtue craves

cadences that should be banned

rivers get written up and

their energy sold such paper

convergences belie your/our

finger stroking the clay bed

or searching for clay babies

to dry where rocks lie in sun (“brought back down to earth with a bang / or the day starts with a bang”)