Sefton Borough of Culture evening with Kei Miller

To celebrate its title as Borough of Culture in 2021, Sefton has joined forces with Calderstones Park-based organisation The Reader to host a series of “evenings in”, featuring some great literature and welcoming, for its second event, writer Kei Miller.

Kei Miller’s memorable readings bring out the musical quality and emotional aspect of his poems, and this event will see him reading live from his last two books and talking about some of the poems found in them.

Probably most well known for his poetry, Jamaica-born Kei Miller has written several books across a range of genres, and counts award-winning essayist, short story writer and novelist among his skills. His 2017 novel, Augustown, won the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Prix Les Afriques and the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Already a recipient of the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to literature from the Institute of Jamaica in 2010, he was awarded the Anthony Sabga medal for Arts & Letters in 2018. Kei Miller has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow. He has taught at the Universities of Glasgow, Royal Holloway and Exeter, and was the 2019 Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor to the University of Iowa.

Poetry-wise, Miller has four collections to his name, all published by Manchester’s Carcanet Press; the most recent being 2019’s In Nearby Bushes. These poems continue his evocations of contemporary Jamaica visited in The Cartographer Tries To Map A Way To Zion (2014), which looks at how places exist as much in the imagination as in their landscapes and which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, preceded by A Light Song Of Light (2010) and There Is An Anger That Moves (2007).

Kei Miller’s memorable readings bring out the musical quality and emotional aspect of his poems, and this event will see him reading live from his last two books and talking about some of the poems found in them. Hosted on Zoom, the first hour of the session will see the audience split into small break-out groups to “take a deep dive” into the featured texts, guided by a Reader Leader. Then, following a short break, everyone will come back together when they will be joined by Kei Miller for a live reading and the chance to ask questions in a Q&A hosted by Andrew Forster, the Shared Reading projects manager at The Reader.

Join guest author Max Porter later in the month in this brand-new series, which launches with Joanne Harris at the end of February.