Jamaican poet Kei Miller was announced as the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection of 2014 for The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion. This is a book full of rhythm, anger and poise and can be purchased from Carcanet.
Perhaps even better than reading Kei’s poems is seeing him perform. To celebrate Kei’s win we thought we’d search the internet for some of his best readings from the book and we came up with this from when the book was still in process:
There is also a great collection of recordings on The Poetry Archive.
On 16 September to mark the opening of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize – still open for entries – Kei joined us for a panel discussion on how humour in short stories can help to navigate difficult topics, and we heard him read from his soon-to-be prize winning book. His performance was electric, and you can read a Storify of that event here.
Steve Willey, Commonwealth Writers