The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion Synopsis
Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2014.
Winner of the 2014 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
We watch as the cartographer, used to the scientific methods of assuming control over a place by mapping it, is gradually compelled to recognize--even to envy--a wholly different understanding of place, as he tries to map his way to the rastaman's eternal city of Zion. As the book unfolds the cartographer learns that, on this island of roads that constrict like throats, every place-name comes freighted with history, and not every place that can be named can be found.
'Raise high the roofbeams, here comes a strong new presence in poetry. . . . Kei Miller's voice speaks and sings with rare confidence and authority.' --Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet and professor, University of Michigan
Author
About Kei Miller
Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978. He divides his time between Jamaica and the UK and is currently teaching Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. He has published several collections of poetry and a book of short stories published by Macmillan Caribbean, THE FEAR OF STONES, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's prize for Best First Book.
