The Refrigerator Memory

By Shannon Bramer

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Mar 11, 2005
• ISBN: 9781770561892

Shannon Bramer

SHANNON BRAMER is an author of poems, plays and short fiction. She has published Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children, illustrated by Cindy Derby, and several poetry collections for adults, winning the Hamilton and Region Arts Council Book Award for suitcases and other poems. Her collection Precious Energy has also been highly acclaimed. Shannon’s plays include Chloe’s Tiny Heart Is Closed (for children) and The Hungriest Woman in the World. She lives with her family in Toronto, Ontario.

Book preview

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