Poet rob maclennan says “Simmers’ usual clear narrative lyric provides a tension through its very restraint and straightforwardness, writing the implications of grief, and the regrets around what can no longer be said, no longer be repeated, no longer be taken back.”

Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. She is the author of five books including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI.

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Congrats on the launch of your latest poetry collection, Bren. The Work is a such a heartbreaking and gorgeous collection, travelling through the dizzying stages of grief as you contend with a number of personal losses. What does it feel like to have the collection out in the world?

It’s a bit surreal to be sharing such an intensely personal story with the world, but I’m grateful that folks are connecting with The Work. Losing someone you love is difficult whether that happens overnight or over years of a diagnosis. This book shares my journey learning to carry the weight of that grief and to hold it alongside joy, as I’ve learned they can co-exist simultaneously. So, it’s an intense book! But thankfully I’m no longer in the place in which these poems live. I’ve moved forward in my healing. Though every time I read from the book, I’m brought back to that time. It’s challenging, but perhaps the book offers space for other folks on their own journeys.

At your launch, you spoke of how the title The Work refers to your own journey of making sense of these losses. Can you speak to this work a bit more, and how the practise of writing helped contribute to this task?

Part of the work of living is loving people, and losing them. There’s no way around it. Writing has taught me how to show up and be present. After a hard phone call or a challenging visit, I found myself reaching for a notebook to process what had just happened. For me, writing is a necessary act. It has always been how I make sense of the world. So in grief, writing became a tool for me to process the different layers of loss. And ultimately, a tool to move towards healing.

In writing, there is also the work of revision, revisiting a moment over and over. What details to include, what to leave out. Though many of the poems take place in a specific instance, I spent months, even years for some, revisiting that experience. Wanting to look at it from different perspectives, so that that depth is folded into the poems.

One cycle of poems in the book—“Still Mom”—traces your relationship with your mother, who has been living with dementia. In these poems, letters in certain words begin to disappear, slowly at first and then with greater intensity. For the reader, there’s a growing sense of confusion and a need to work ever harder to generate meaning as the words dissolve. Tell us more about the process of working on these poems and the choices you’ve made in their crafting.

The poems in “Still Mom” began as prose poems documenting my mother’s slow decline with Alzheimer’s. Each stage of the disease brought its own challenges, be it my mother’s anger or paranoia or delusions. Writing functioned for me as a release valve, a way to notice deeply what was happening while letting go of the emotional pressure that can build up.

It was only much later that I had the idea to deteriorate the poems, to mimic her increasing inability to communicate. I started by removing letters. Then punctuation and justification. And then by adding gaps. It was a strange process to intentionally dismantle my own writing. But it really reflects the experience of trying (and often failing) to communicate with my mom. These days, I rely on touch and music to connect with her. I’m always just trying to meet her where she is.

And a special shout out to my publisher, Andrew Steeves of Gaspereau Press! He ran with this idea of disappearing letters and used it to make one of the most striking book covers. His design is always so thoughtful, and here he used the impression of the type without applying ink to reflect the absences in the poems.

The final poem—“Seven Pounds”—explores the aftermath of your father’s death, and contains the powerful line “I didn’t know that all this noticing/was love.” For me, this speaks directly to the heart of the collection—your careful attention to the minutiae of the everyday, against which the beauty and grief of a lifetime unfold. How important is this kind of close noticing to your poetry practice?

Observation has always been a foundation of my poetry practice. I believe one task of the poet is to tell the truth and another is to give voice to what it is like to be alive. In this body, in this moment. I got good practice at acutely noticing the world around me when I worked for five summers as a fire lookout in Alberta. You’ve got to pay close attention to your surroundings to know whether that grey wisp is smoke from yesterday’s lightning or mist rising from the creek.

Later, I when I was working as a park naturalist, I mapped my urban neighbourhood of Hastings-Sunrise in East Vancouver. Things like the location of tree swings and how many open doors there were on a hot night. I’ve often thought of my writing practice as observe, record, reflect. I’m always trying to notice the changes in my environment; it helps me pay attention to each present moment.

Finally, tell us more about one of the poems that you carry especially close to your heart, and why it is so meaningful to you.

The opening poem is called “Load Upon Load” and it sets the tone for the book in describing the cumulative effect of loss. How small tasks, like filling out an insurance form, become so difficult. It reminds me that what matters in the end are the ways people show up for one another. I’m so proud of my brother, how he supported his wife through stage four cancer. And how he continues to show up, to be present for his two girls as a single dad. The poem reminds me that even after those we love are gone, we can still communicate with them in all kinds of ways. Flickering lights from the ceiling, hummingbirds hovering at the window. They are still here with us, even now.

Load Upon Load

There comes a point
when the losses stack
up and all you want is
a few good years and
cash in your wallet.

My dad

before he died
threatened to never
talk to my brother
again after he flew
his sick wife to
Disneyland without
health coverage.

Stage four

ineligible under any
plan. She’s dying, I said,
you of all people know cancer.
Two kids under five.
And now I hear it in

my brother’s

voice, how load bears
upon load. Only in the
quiet drunken hours
can he let go. And now

you’re gone,

a streetlight flickering
on and off that he talks
to like a Ouija board.

Yes or no.

The pain pooling
under the surface.
All it takes
is an easy task
like filling out an
insurance form

to drown.