Writing Down the Vision

Overview

The conviction that telling and collecting stories is the most powerful means to revelation is the driving force behind these essays from celebrated poet and novelist Kei Miller. The pages of the book are filled with stories about the experience of migration, of leaving familiar places and making connections in new ones, as well as reflections on family, friendship, and nation. Other more analytical pieces address the physicality of language, dub poetry, and the work of Marlon James, a friend of Miller’s. Still other texts display a passionate concern with moral justice with respect to economic and social oppression and homophobia. In these essays—prophecies, in Miller’s estimation—he shares with the reader a sensibility in which the sacred and the secular, conviction and skepticism, vision and analysis, and polemic and reflection engage in a profound and lively debate frequently marked by an undercurrent of humor.

Reviews

"Kei Miller's is a voice we will hear much more of, for it speaks and sings with rare confidence and authority."  —Lorna Goodison, author, By Love Possessed and Supplying Salt and Light

"An extraordinary new voice singing with clarity and grace."  —Olive Senior, author, Dancing Lessons and Gardening in the Tropics

Author Biography

Kei Miller is a professor of creative writing at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. His first collection of short fiction, The Fear of Stones, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers First Book prize in 2007. He is also the author of the poetry collections Kingdom of Empty Bellies, A Light Song of Light, and There Is an Anger That Moves, as well as of the novel The Same Earth. He is the editor of New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology.