R. Bremner

About the Author

R. Bremner has written of “incense, peppermints, and the color of time” since the 1970s, bringing to American poetry a voice shaped by work, travel, hardship, faith, and relentless curiosity. Over the decades he has worked as a cab driver, a UPS truck unloader, a security guard, a computer programmer for Pan American World Airways, and later a vice-president at Citibank—an eclectic life that has continually fed his art.

His poems have appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including International Poetry Review, Sensations Magazine, Inclement, Turbulence, Sanitarium, Title Waves, the Passaic Review, Poets Online, Every Writer’s Resource, The Red Wheelbarrow (Rutherford), Ancient Paths, The Society of Classical Poets, Yellow Chair Review, Oleander Review, Paterson Literary Review, the Journal of Formal Poetry, the 2015 and 2016 Yom HaShoah Anthologies, Brownstone Poets Anthologies, Lips Magazine, the Mensa Bulletin, and many others. He has also been featured in Jerry Jazz Musician and The High Window, and first appeared in the 1979 Passaic Review alongside Allen Ginsberg.

Bremner has published numerous books and chapbooks, including Hungry Words (Alien Buddha Press), Absurd (Cajun Mutt Press), Walking on the Beach (Parousia Press), Chambers of a Heart (New Feral Press), Ektomorphic (Presa Press), Pencil Sketches (Clare Songbirds Publications), and Erasing Influences (Moonstone Arts Press). His eBooks include Stories of Love and Hate, Poems for the Narrow, Dog Stories, and You Are Once Again the Stranger.

He is a three-time Honorable Mention and once Third Place winner in the Allen Ginsberg Awards. Despite a major stroke and a liver transplant, he continues to write—“by the grace of God,” as he says—with a spirit that is equal parts resilience, wit, and wonder.

A frequent reader at poetry events throughout the Northeast, Bremner is an active member of the Montclair Write Group, the Brownstone Poets, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poets. He lives in Northeast New Jersey with his beloved sociologist wife, their son, and their dog, Ariel. He has traveled widely, particularly to Sri Lanka, the birthplace of his wife.