
Things I Have Withheld (Hardback)
Kei Miller (author)- Coming soon
In this moving and lyrical collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit - the crimes that haunt them, and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood.
Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, white women's tears, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice.
With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why - our actions, defence mechanisms, imaginations and interactions - and those of the world around us.
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781838852795
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 343 g
Dimensions: 220 x 144 x 24 mm
Edition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
Daring, unforgettable . . . He can shift from chatty to tragic to sublime in a line, and make it look easy * * Telegraph * *
Superb . . . wit and lyricism masterfully balanced to render a compelling whole * * Guardian * *
Brilliant and moving . . . Each observant sentence in this gorgeous book is a gem * * New York Times * *
Miller's storytelling is superb * * Sunday Times * *
He has such a distinctive voice . . . his love of rhythm and performance poetry is evident in his work -- CERYS MATTHEWS
These captivating poets write from the heart with poems which range from the spare and haunting to the risky and experimental. There are surprises, there is beauty, there are pleasures to be discovered, there is much to be enjoyed -- BERNARDINE EVARISTO on NEW CARIBBEAN POETRY
A deceptive spellbinder -- MARLON JAMES
Kei Miller's is a voice we will hear much more of, for it speaks and sings with rare confidence and authority -- LORNA GOODISON, Poet Laureate of Jamaica
Miller isn't just a writer . . . he is a true alchemist * * Herald * *
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