Writing Down the Vision

Essays & Prophecies

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.