The Power of Form in Loss: Bren Simmers and Robert Colman in Conversation 

In 2024, Bren Simmers and Robert Colman both published books of poems centred on familial loss, with both tackling, in part, a parent’s struggle with dementia. Beyond very similar titles—The Work (Simmers) and Ghost Work (Colman)—both poets brought to the topic a fascination with the power of form. The authors recently had a virtual discussion about the process involved in their books’ creation.

Rob: First off, congratulations on all of the positive recognition The Work has received this year. It’s well deserved for so many reasons, capturing the pain of several losses— a sister-in-law’s passing, the sudden loss of a father, and the gradual loss of a mother to dementia— in a delicate and honest manner. 

The book starts with “Load Upon Load,” a tightly structured, short-lined poem with enjambment that builds the tension, the frustration of family struggles and miscommunications. There are several poems with a similar structure in the section Fork Gospel. Form is something that fascinates me, and I wonder if these poems were initially thought of as they have become, or if they found their way there gradually. 

Bren: Looking back at drafts of “Load Upon Load,” the poem started out as one stanza with longer, enjambed lines. (I keep all my dated drafts in a single file so it makes it easier to see how they evolve and also to revert back to if an experimental draft is not successful.) The poem stayed in that shape for about a year or so until I got the words right. I then experimented with multiple stanzas and shorter lines to slow the poem down and add weight. I have a few default forms that poems “arrive in” and it is often many revisions later that they find their final form. 

The long poem “Overheard” is similarly intriguing. On the left of the page is, ostensibly, something that the narrator has overheard, and to the right, where this something has taken the narrator. What is remarkable about this approach is that it has given a structure that allows the narrative to shift from a sister-in-law’s illness to a mother’s illness, to the struggle of facing life in the Anthropocene. When, in the life of this project, did this poem come to be? I know that in several books I’ve worked on, there was a point where I wanted to find that one point that brought many themes together. This poem is so successful in this that I wondered…

Were these overheard statements something you collected over time? What brought you to this approach? 

During this period of cumulative losses, it was difficult to write. In 2019, I started scribbling overheard statements on the back of envelopes. I then used these as prompts or jumping off points for timed writing. This process allowed me to respond to the concurrent themes in my life. I wrote about thirty prose poems (one of my default forms) and let them sit for many months before revising them and selecting the best ones. Sometime in late 2021, I broke the prose into lines, and placed the poems in a series, cutting more poems in the process. I then tried positioning the titles on the side as a kind of call and response. About a month later, I had the idea to run all the poems together into one long poem. It was only then that “Overheards” found its final form. 

You speak of a long process of finding the right shape for a poem. Can you describe that process? Does it involve reading the work out loud? Looking at it in different shapes on the page? 

Yes, definitely. I read the poem out loud, noting where I trip over words or lines. I edit on screen first, then print a copy and mark it up. This allows me to experience the poem as a reader or an editor would. Once the language feels tight, I play with the form, trying out different shapes that are informed by the content. There needs to be a reason for the form. I learned that from working with my editor Andrew Steeves at Gaspereau Press and it has made me more intentional with my choices.

“Still Mom” is a 12-part poem following the progression of your mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. Having also written on the subject recently, I know the struggles of approaching the subject in a fresh manner. There are a couple of aspects in the series that interested me and made it stand out: 

Firstly, you choose to use the letter “o” as an indication of her slowly losing language. As the poem progresses, more and more instances of the letter are missing. Why the choice of the “o” over another vowel? Is there something about the letter that serves a purpose in the choice? 

Secondly, the sequence is set up as a series of prose poems, but as it progresses and more letters disappear, spaces begin appearing between words and the lines start to fracture. The later sections begin to look like lyric poems rather than prose. It made me think about the concept of poems—seeing the world slant—and perhaps a sense that the logic of prose no longer works as you try to understand someone you are losing in such a way. I’d love to hear your take on this. 

I chose the letter “o” to address the holes and omissions in her memory. “O” is also used as a way to express strong emotion. The idea to physically represent the gaps in my mother’s memory first appeared in a single poem that didn’t end up in the book. But I did take that idea and apply it across the series of prose poems, first with the occasional “o” dropping out, then adding repetition to mimic the looping of her speech. I then deliberately started to drop some (then all) of the capitalization, punctuation, justification, and finally introduced physical spaces into the text. The idea was to mimic the deterioration of language that happens with Alzheimer’s. By distressing these tight prose poems in this way, it allowed the reader to experience that loss as they try to decipher what is being said. 

In a completely opposite way, but just as effectively, “People Don’t Dance in Public Anymore” comes back to prose and serves as a lyric essay to my ear. I’m not sure what we call the symbol that begins each separate section but it is visually beautiful, demarcating individual thoughts around dancing. And interestingly, it’s about the power of dance to keep you mentally agile. So—a subject that seems to beg for clever use of the page to describe movement, but this is clearly someone looking in, outside but involved in the dance. Again, tell us something of how this poem came to be. 

A few years ago, I was introduced to a Japanese hybrid form called the zuihitsu, which can be translated as “running brush.” The form is flexible and wide-ranging as it follows the mind as it flits around a central theme. After reading several excellent examples of the form by Kimiko Hahn and Tina Chang, I decided to try to write my own zuihitsu around the subject of dancing. At the time, it was one of the few things my mom still loved to do. The form also allowed me the space to fold in ideas around aging and women’s bodies. It’s funny, when I sent the poem out, one journal said it straddled the boundaries between poetry and prose and they wanted it to be one or the other. But I think that straddling is its strength. 

The zuihitsu form sounds intriguing. I’ll definitely be looking for other examples. I also like the idea of hybrid forms—sometimes a topic demands a fresh approach. And you take it in so many directions, I can’t imagine it being handled a different way. 

Thanks, Rob. Now it’s my turn to ask you about your book. In Ghost Work, you capture the helplessness of caring for a loved one with dementia: “I left you standing in the middle / of the care home wondering what to do next / because I couldn’t get you seated / or pointed towards the television.” In the first section, poems reference questions and answers, but as the disease progresses, you note that “questions are unproductive now.” In the devastating final section, you describe your father happily sucking a mouth swab of rye and ginger in bed, that fleeting moment where “It was good to see you / one last time.” Sheesh. Thank you for these poems. 

Formal poems are spread throughout this book: pantoums, triolets, ghazals and sonnets. Can you talk about why you chose those forms. And in particular—the pantoum and triolet that rely heavily on repetition? 

The pantoum form was suggested to me by poet Shane Neilson when I first started conceiving this as a topic that I might try to capture in poems. I quickly wrote three. The form, for me, captured the frustration of the illness, how it inevitably requires repeating answers to questions your loved one is asking to make sense of the world. It also suggests a claustrophobic feeling related to that same narrowing of a person’s perspective after living a life so full of a quest for knowledge. My editor, Jim Johnstone, suggested turning a smaller poem I’d written into a triolet to echo that same claustrophobic feeling. 

In the “Memory Clinic” series, the poems are written in the father’s voice. What was it like to try and embody his experience?

It was a difficult process. I tried to take clues from how he reacted to me and the world around him at different stages of the illness. In a couple of instances, I took comments he made almost verbatim as a frame for where the process took me. I was also honest with myself from the beginning, knowing that what I was writing was inevitably a fiction. I just hoped the poetry would take the idea of his voice that little bit further. 

In the first poem, the speaker directly addresses the father: “Did I tell you? I’m gardening from seed this year.” And in the second-to-last poem: “Do I listen better without you now?” Can you talk a bit about how the conversation with your father has changed and how his passing has affected your listening to the world?

It’s funny you mention this. I wrote another poem just the other day in which my father turns up in my neighbourhood in the guise of a hawk, so these conversations continue at much wider intervals. I think any loss makes us more aware of the fragility of the world. What I’m writing now suggests that I’m hearing the world as something more connected but also less straightforward. The voices pile on and make a sense of their own and I just herd them into discrete segments of resonance. 

Losing a loved one to dementia is often described as a long goodbye. When did you start writing these poems? How long did it take you to complete the book and how did writing these poems affect your grief journey?

My first poems on the subject were written in 2015 and appeared in my previous book, Democratically Applied Machine. But the majority of Ghost Work was written between 2018 and 2022, taking in about a year before my father’s death and then through the pandemic. In a way, having that time at home with a manuscript that was getting close to completion made the pandemic more manageable for me. The work itself helped me work through a lot of the emotions related to the loss as well. It’s true, it is a long goodbye, and in some ways much of my conscious grieving happened before his death. The work written later in a way felt like searching for anything I might have missed. 

Writing about family can be tricky. Not only can it be deeply personal, we each have our own version of the story as you note in the acknowledgements. Did you share the manuscript with your family before publication? What was it like for you to share this private story publicly?

I don’t share work with family ahead of publication for that very reason—so many different ways of perceiving a shared experience. I always think I’ll second guess myself too much if they share with me their perceptions at that stage. But they are very supportive. I can’t remember who said this first, but I think it’s true that every poem is at least a kind of fiction. 

I do struggle to read poems from the book aloud to an audience, but that gets easier with every reading. In the past, publication of a book of poems would be followed by a sense of loss. That wasn’t the case with this book. As nervous as I was about its reception among family and the general public, I felt that it was a self-contained whole that no other previous work I’ve written has achieved. Mostly this wholeness was because of the subject matter, but also because of the support, encouragement, and editorial acumen I received from Jim Johnstone along the way.

While I was writing The Work, I devoured other books on this subject. Forrest Gander has a long poem about his mother in Be With; Jane Munro writes about her partner in both Blue Sonoma and in Open Every Window; David Chariandy’s novel Soucouyant features the relationship between a son and a mother who is suffering from dementia; and Jolene Brackey has written a guide for caregivers called Creating Moments of Joy. Were there any books that helped you in the process of writing Ghost Work?

I am the opposite when it comes to subject matter. I loved Blue Sonoma and other works on the subject but didn’t search them out as I worked on this. Again, I worry that I’ll be swayed by how others have handled the topic. More, I was searching for examples of the forms I was using. Perhaps the single book I can point to as a guiding light during part of the writing of this was John Thompson’s collected poems, which I took with me to Barcelona, where I wrote the longer poem series “Lost on the Way to Tortosa.” I rarely write while travelling overseas but I knew the poems had to shatter and cease to be so linear as the book progressed. The ghazal seemed the perfect form for that disintegration to begin, so I gave myself to the book and the process of that creation. 

I love your questions. Mine feel like they hide behind technical concerns, whereas yours hit me emotionally in a really good way. Speaking of sharing with family, how did you navigate telling this broader story of loss? Did you share it with family ahead of time? 

When writing about others, I try to be as truthful and kind as possible and to write through the lens of my own experience. I consider what details to include and what to leave out. I did send a copy of the manuscript to my brothers before publication; both trusted me and gave their blessing without reading it. Later, one read the first poem and had to put the book down as it was too heavy. The other said it was cathartic to re-experience those moments. It helped him grieve and remember all the love that was present alongside the losses.   

The back cover copy of the book uses the word “hope” in its description of the poems. And indeed, the book ends with a poem about loving that feels full of positivity. I’m struggling to shape a question for this that isn’t clumsy. For me, writing Ghost Work, cataloguing the loss and my reactions to it—good, bad, and unreasonable—helped me better understand it. I’ve come to understand that as a kind of love for life. Did you come to The Work in a similar frame of mind? Are you a hopeful person by nature? 

The hope is to learn how to carry those losses forward as the relationship shifts from external to internal. To continue to have those conversations with loved ones, be it inside our head or with the hawk or hummingbird that shows up in the yard. My counsellor and I talk about how love and sorrow are connected in grief and how it takes a while to separate those things, to decide what to remember and what to let go of. Writing The Work allowed me to sort through it all, so by the end of the book (after many revisions and reflections over time) what I was left with was love and a renewed gratitude for being alive. 

I think both of our books end as if their topic has found a natural conclusion. What are you working on now, and does it relate at all to The Work? 

I have been trying to write poems that aren’t about death with limited success. I came across a Marie Howe quote that gave me comfort. “After I publish a book, I’m completely empty and silent for a long time. In many ways, you have to wait to become a different person with different concerns.” The odd poems have come as gifts, but mostly I’m reading and practicing being present. The poems will come in their own time. 

Can you say more about what you’re working on now? You mentioned earlier that you’re “hearing the world as something more connected but also less straightforward.” I often think of poems as an act of listening, so I’m curious to know how your antennae or approach to poems has changed.

The Anthropocene has been a topic that I’ve approached occasionally (much the way you have in The Work), as it works metaphorically with so much other loss we experience. I’ve been inspired by younger writers like Meghan Kemp-Gee, Mary Germaine, and more recently Em Dial to make it a more central part of the work. Some of the poems are less linear, taking more leaps by allowing the poetry to match my thought processes rather than logical restraints. It’s slow, though. I tend to have bursts of activity—a week or two in a season where I write furiously, followed by months where I wait (mostly patiently) for something new to come. I’m much more accepting of those silences than I was 10 years ago. The being present you mention is so important. Easy to get caught up in wanting a completed object, if you’re not careful. I think the poetry gains from that patience. I look forward to seeing where it takes you next.  

Thanks for this rich conversation. I look forward to reading your new poems. 

Robert Colman

Robert Colman is a Newmarket, Ont.-based poet, critic, and essayist. His most recent collection of poems is Ghost Work (Palimpsest Press 2024).

• Robert Colman

  https://miramichireader.ca/author/robert-colman/

  

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Bren Simmers

Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Her latest poetry collection The Work (Gaspereau Press) was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI.