From
the "whittled
towns" of Saskatchewan to the song of the "red-breasted delivery
truck," Bren Simmers uses her unique ability to draw connections
between
rural and urban, between the divine and the absurd, to create dazzling
poetry.
In Night Gears, Simmers' first collection, her lines demand the
reader's
attention, whether she is cataloguing roadkill on a trip to the arctic,
revelling in the intensity of a thunderstorm at a fire lookout, or
unfolding
the silent pain of small-town life.
“Brimming
with “side of the road
wonder” and equipped with a discerning intelligence, Bren Simmers goes
panning
for gold in the day-to-day and the out-of-the-way and considers both
the gravel
and the glitter she finds there. A
generous spirit rescues the moments we’re most likely to forget, the
places
we’re least likely to visit.” —
Sue Sinclair
“Whether
she’s attending to the
workings at the heart of small towns, or the archaic mechanism that is
a moose
stopped at the side of the road, Bren Simmers is attuned to the
intricate
machinery of the world, within and without us. Here is a poetry
committed to
the human and the natural, and to the intersection between.”
— Rhea
Tregebov