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Kei Miller

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Three poems

Book of Genesis

Suppose there was a book full only of the word,
let – from whose clipped sound all things began: fir
and firmament, feather, the first whale – and suppose

we could scroll through its pages every day
to find and pronounce a Let meant only for us –
we would stumble through the streets with open books,

eyes crossed from too much reading; we would speak
in auto-rhyme, the world would echo itself – and still
we’d continue in rounds, saying let and let and let

until even silent dreams had been allowed.

Poem from There is an Anger That Moves
Kei Miller (Carcanet, 2007)

Kei Miller was born Kingston, Jamaica in 1978. He read English at the University of the West Indies and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. His first book of poetry, Kingdom of Empty Bellies, was published in 2006 by Heaventree Press. It was shortly followed by a collection of short stories, The Fear of Stones, which explores the issue of Jamaican homophobia and was shortlisted in 2007 for a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in the category of Best First Book. His second collection of poetry, There is an Anger That Moves, was published in 2007 by Carcanet Press and he has a novel forthcoming from Phoenix,The Same Earth. Kei Miller divides his time between Jamaica and the United Kingdom, where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.

Page(s) 74

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