Poetry. A mother's illness and early death is only the beginning of the story of STRANGER, Laura Sims's second collection. This is a death whose presence and particulars are felt and inscribed, and which achieves an agency, a purview, a resistance. We feel the loss from all angles, even as Sims's episodic, quicksilver narrative moves up and through a mother's life and its incompletion, her apprehension in the face of death, a surviving child's guilt and the adult child's attempts at comprehension of who/what the mother is, now that she's gone. In the end there is a hopeful hopelessness in approaching Eternity. Laura Sims's delicacy and agility are equal to her forbearance, and all are up to the remarkable task of recounting a life and afterlife.
Author Hometown: Brooklyn, NY USA
About the author: Laura Sims is the author of two books of poetry: STRANGER (Fence Books, 2009); and PRACTIC, RESTRAINT (Fence Books, Alberta Prize, 2005); and of four chapbooks, including Corrections (Bronze Skull Press, 2006) and Bank Book (Answer Tag Press, 2004). Her work was included in the anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), and individual poems have appeared in the journals: DENVER QUARTERLY, Colorado Review, AUFGABE, CRAYON, Cab/Net, Octopus, First Intensity, 26, How2, Parcel, 6X6, La Petite Zine, Columbia Poetry Review, JUBILAT, Lit, and FENCE, among others. She has published book reviews in Boston Review, Jacket, and Rain Taxi; an overview essay on the work of Diane Williams in The Review of Contemporary Fiction (2003); and the article, "David Markson and the Problem of the Novel," in New England Review (2008). She is currently writing essays on the short poem, and working on a poetry manuscript, tentatively titled My god is this a man. She is a co-editor of Instance Press, a curator for the Segue Reading Series, and a volunteer at 826. She lives with Corey and their cat Gomi-chan in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Reviews:
http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/stranger
http://tsky-reviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/laura-sims-stranger.html
http://www.laurasims.net/
http://coldfrontmag.com/features/spotlight-laura-sims
http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2010_02_015800.php
