Nightmare Jones by Shannon Bramer

 Hello and welcome to Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge for Roundup.

  Quick question for the Poetry Friday community: are any of you accepting members in your poetry critique groups? Or do you know of groups who are accepting members? (Asking for a striving children's poet!) Please reply to my email irene (at) irenelatham (dot) com. Thank you!

Also: this week's Tuesday 2-Minute Writing Tip #26 is something I shared at Boyds Mills (Highlights) Poetry Palooza: a poem is a bird (not a birdcage). Click here to listen!

Today I'm excited to welcome Shannon Bramer to Live Your Poem! I fell in love with Shannon's work when I read her first book Climbing Shadows (illus. by Cindy Derby, House of Anansi/Groundswood Press, 2019). Read my blog post here. Shannon's voice is entirely her own, and her poems are full of surprises, which I love! 

Shannon hails from Canada. She's also a mom and a playwright. She doesn't have a website (yet!). The illustrator Irene Luxbacher, who worked on Shannon's book Robot, Unicorn, Queen, inspired "Auntie Irene" (!!) in one of my favorite poems in Shannon's newest collection, Nightmare Jones, illus. by Cindy Derby, House of Anansi/Groundswood Press, 2025. The poem is called "Dollhouse Spiders."

poem by Shannon Bramer; illus. by Cindy Derby

Dollhouse Spiders

Aunt Irene is finer than fine;

she keeps them as pets.

A brown recluse; a few clowns —

a tirade of tiny bird spiders, a trickle

of starlight spiders going up

and down the stairs; Auntie Irene

listens to them, she hears their legs click

on the tiny windows, the woosh

of unraveling silk when they work

on their webs. At night there is

tinkling on the keys of the dollhouse

piano, the ghosts of gone spiders

in spindly shadows on the moonlit

walls. I shrink myself down to the size

of a spider at sleepovers

with Auntie I. We listen.

We love the splendid spider music.

- Shannon Bramer

Y'all: I am an "Auntie I" so of course I loved seeing my name featured in such a brilliant poem! 

(Aside: have you read The Winter of the Dollhouse by Laura Amy Schlitz? Wonderful!!)

And now, please welcome Shannon Bramer! Find below her responses to four simple prompts inspired by my book Fresh Delicious: Poems from the Farmer's Market (coming in paperback April 7, 2026!), about her new book Nightmare Jones. Enjoy!

FRESH

Shannon Bramer

SB: I've been writing poems since I was eleven years old, and I remember vividly the wonder and anxiety of getting a fresh notebook, how natural and urgent it was for me to write, but also what came with it--a pang of stress, thinking about how my words might also somehow sully the perfect, empty pages of the new book. It is still that way for me today; writing poems can sometimes feel like treading on freshly fallen snow. I have a fear of the mess I might make on the undisturbed landscape, that what I might write might expose some mistake in my thinking, the flaws in my heart. At the same time, I have always felt comforted by the infinite patience of the empty page; knowing it would always be there for me, waiting, without judgment. Nightmare Jones is a book of poems that makes room for all the tension inside me as a writer and human being. I felt nervous and uncertain writing many of the poems in the book, facing some of my feelings and exploring childhood images, worries, and thoughts that have followed me into adulthood. But that was the point of it: it's all allowed--the joy, the play, the discomfort as well. It all belongs in poetry. When I wrote Nightmare Jones, I felt like a bus driver, pulling over at every stop and letting every strange character and complicated feeling I met in for the ride.

DIFFICULT

SB: I miss being in the world of Nightmare Jones. Badlonely, Auntie Irene, the wonderous mermaid-like creature Cindy Derby illuminated so perfectly for "If She Was a Monster"--all the characters in the book are so deeply lovable to me that I'm finding it challenging to move on to another project.

Cindy Derby is a puppeteer and has an extensive background in theatre; in Nightmare Jones, Cindy's illustrations are as mysterious and suggestive as a theatrical set. I have a little dream to bring Nightmare Jones to life on stage somehow; in my mind, I see enormous puppets, glittering monsters high up on stilts, and a child that is the boss of it all. The child pulls all the strings.

DELICIOUS

SB: Words are my favourite food...but when I'm not writing, I love cooking for my family. I love discovering a new recipe or digging up an old one, figuring out a change or adaptation I might make if I don't have all the ingredients on hand. I also enjoy dining out very much, especially lunch, because lunch reminds me of my grandmother, who took me out often on weekends when I visited her. One of my favourite things about visiting a restaurant is investigating the menu. A menu is such a gorgeous and revealing artifact. I delight in all the menus--the busy, sticky menus--the austere, elegant menus--because a menu is the table of contents of a restaurant, there is history in a menu, stories, and sometimes even lies (sorry, we used to offer that but we don't anymore!). When the idea for a restaurant in the underworld popped up in my mind for Nightmare Jones--I ran with it. The poem is simply entitled "Welcome to Persephone's" and it's where to go if you'd like some Hurt Thoughts Soda with Frozen Rosehips or some Deep-Fried Questions with Red Ripper Sauce. Someday I'd like to write an entire book of menu poems for imaginary restaurants. My eleven-year-old son is convinced my next book will be a "funny but poetic" cookbook (about pickles!?).

ANYTHING ELSE

SB: 

yellow crab spider

Eight Legs: The Story of Dollhouse Spiders

1.

I'm scared of spiders because I can feel them thinking.

2.

I met a thumb-sized wolf spider one morning while making my bed in a small sleeping cabin in Northern Ontario, Canada. It's likely, or at least very possible, that the spider had been in bed with me all night.

3.

I was writing and re-writing a poem called "Dollhouse Spiders" for a new book I had already titled Nightmare Jones. While I was writing I was thinking about my friend, Irene. I wanted someone to be with me inside that poem, so I chose her.

4.

I shook the sheets to urge the wolf out of my bed, but I did not try to kill it. I let it go. (It might come back.)

kiddos with Irene Luxbacher

5.

The name Irene is derived from the Greek word for peace. Auntie I is the brave teacher in each of our own hearts, the one who chooses curiosity and wonder over fear. Deep Underwater, by Irene Luxbacher, is about finding peace deep inside yourself. It's also how I found Auntie I.

6.

You can be scared of something beautiful. You can be terrified. Sometimes you need someone beside you.

7.

The elegant black spider, in that moment of emerging and being spotted by me, froze, as I did, and we saw each other.

Small Shannon

8.

In the universe of Dollhouse Spiders the child is little Shanny (me!) and I choose my family. I choose a sleepover with Auntie I, who always makes me feel safe. We listen. We love the splendid spider music.

THANK YOU, SHANNON! Splendid spider music, indeed! 

Y'all, don't miss Shannon's books. They are special!

Now for today's ArtSpeak: WOMEN. The next artist on the Harper's Bazaar list is Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage. Her work is amazing! It would have been fun to write a poem today about a spider or a dollhouse, but when I looked at the online offerings of Augusta's work, I was drawn to her sculpture of a new baby. I'm lucky that my good friend Pat often shares pics of her two great-grandbabies (and two more on the way!), so I have the sweetness of infants often in my life! 

Process notes: I started this poem as a tricube. I've written a lot of tricubes, and last week Amy LV at the Poem Farm urged us to Try Try Try a Tricube. But I needed more lines, so I let the poem break free from the tricube form (I was finding the baby in the stone, just like Augusta!). The tricube work did leave me with mostly 3-syllable lines and some enjambment that I really like: "you, my heart," so YAY! Thanks so much for reading.

To a Newborn

You've crash-
landed in a blue
universe

your cheeks—round
ears—perfect
seashells

your bright eyes
blink-blinking

when I hold
you, my heart
finds its orbit

o small Star,
welcome!
You are home!

-Irene Latham