The Refrigerator Memory is an exuberant, strangely funny celebration of sadness.

With fable-like miniature stories and short lyric poems, Shannon Bramer creates a world littered with stolen pears and prosthetic arms and inhabited by Kindness scientists and hot-air-balloon operators. The poems invoke a world of childhood delights and demons in the context of grown-up fears and appetites: heartbreak, loss, jealousy and old-fashioned sibling rivalry. You’ll find the hopelessly misunderstood Love the Clown (never goes out without his red wig) and Noni, a forlorn young man who can’t stop crying.

But while sadness plays a starring role, the true hero of the collection is the imagination; its transformative powers warm widows and drunken gods and designated mourners.

You won’t forget The Refrigerator Memory: the icebox cometh to warm your heart.

‘Bramer’s “Our Prosthesis�* … [is] wonderfully succinct, while still managing to convey entire lives floating beneath its surface.’ – Lee Gowan

‘[Bramer writes] poems with resonant grief, fragile glass and desperate love, carved carefully and spare out of cold, dark objects, achieving small, remarkable poems.’ – rob mclennan

Shannon Bramer was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and now lives in Toronto. She is a playwright and poet who writes books for human beings of all ages. She is the author of suitcases and other poems (winner, Hamilton and Region Best Book Award), scarf, The Refrigerator Memory, Precious Energy, and Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children, illustrated by Cindy Derby. Shannon also conducts poetry workshops in schools and is the editor of Think City: The Poems of Gracefield Public School. Her plays (Monarita, The Collectors, and The Hungriest Woman in the World) have appeared in juried festivals across the country, among them: New Ideas (Toronto), the Women's Work Festival (St. John's), and Sarasvati FemFest (Winnipeg). Shannon's plays have all been developed in St. John's, Newfoundland, thanks to the Women's Work Festival, where she has returned with a new script-in-progress five times since 2009.

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