Description
This small book, written in the aftermath of the sudden death of Rona Cran’s younger sister, is an attempt to give shape to the landscape of grief. In its relentless and fragmentary form, I Remember Kim is at once a memoir about a lost sister and a chronicle of disintegration, a collage of memories that is as much a coming-together as it is a falling-apart, an examination of the failure of memory, of memories, of memoir. This is a book about sisters; about survival, and the insufficiency of survival; and about how to remember when all you want to do is forget.
‘Never has Joe Brainard’s pioneering format been put to more haunting, heart-breaking use than in I Remember Kim. This kaleidoscopic elegy movingly explores the complex, double-edged compensations of memory, oscillating between vibrant vignettes of sisterly love and bleak, serial snapshots of the onslaught of grief. A tour de force.’ Mark Ford
‘Unguarded in its mess and message, I Remember Kim proves a heartfelt and engaging memoir buoyed by Cran’s resolve “not to master” but “navigate {through} grief”, and with a brio equal to the work of her idols Joe Brainard, Georges Perec, and David Wojnarowicz.’ Paolo Javier
‘The scaffolding of Cran’s memory, in sensory, quotidian, vivid detail. A family album, a romp of associative time. Moments of quixotic motion in a litany of heartbeats. Joe Brainard’s classic form is a lifeline here for the care and power of grief.’ Anne Waldman
‘The simplest human acts are often the hardest: to remember, to name. They often also make for the most powerful poetry. Rona Cran’s I Remember Kim struggles through these acts of remembering, of naming, in the wake of the poet’s sister’s sudden death, drawing on a poetic tradition that ranges from Shakespeare to Frank O’Hara to Danez Smith and an archive of memory that spans continents and decades. It is at once an intensely personal, ordinary remembrance and a glimpse into the sublimity of grief—a little book, and an oceanic one.’ Linsday Turner
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rona Cran is a London-based writer and scholar. They are the author of Collage in Twentieth-Century Art, Literature, and Culture (2014), with books in progress including an oral history of the New York School of poets and a study of everyday rebellion, dissident reading, and alternate world-building in 20th-century New York poetry. In 2021 they co-founded the Network for New York School Studies, a virtual and IRL meeting space for a global community of poets, scholars, and enthusiasts of the New York School, which also advocates for, supports, and emphasizes the value of community-based public poetry initiatives. They currently teach modern American poetry at the University of Birmingham. I Remember Kim is their first poetry collection.
