The poems in The Work engage with the work of love and loss and the hope that we might somehow learn to carry our portion of grief. Simmers writes of churning in an accumulation of losses–the sudden death of her father, the descent of her mother into dementia, her sister-in-law’s terminal illness–and of the work of slowly making wholeness out of brokenness. Her writing fosters a vulnerability and wit that sidestep easier tropes, a reminder that healing often comes through saying “Hello” and “Yes”; a realization that “all this noticing / was love.”

Bren Simmers is the author of one previous book of poetry, Night Gears (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010). She is the winner of an Arc Poetry Magazine Poem of the Year Award, was a finalist for The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize and has been twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan, 2013). She currently lives in Squamish, BC.

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