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    In Nearby Bushes
    In Nearby Bushes
    In Nearby Bushes
    Ebook88 pages38 minutes

    In Nearby Bushes

    By Kei Miller

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    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize 2020
    Longlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize
    A Telegraph Book of the Year 2019
    The highly anticipated new collection from Forward Prize-winner Kei Miller explores his strangest landscape yet - the placeless place. Here is a world in which it is both possible to hide and to heal, a landscape as much marked by magic as it is by murder.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarcanet Poetry
    Release dateAug 29, 2019
    ISBN9781784108465
    In Nearby Bushes
    Author

    Kei Miller

    Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978 and has written several books across a range of genres. His 2014 collection, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection while 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. He is also an award-winning essayist. In 2010, the Institute of Jamaica awarded him the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to Literature and in 2018 he was awarded the Anthony Sabga medal for Arts & Letters. Kei 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. He is the 2019 Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor to the University of Iowa and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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      Book preview

      In Nearby Bushes - Kei Miller

      HERE WHERE ONCE LAY THE BODIES

      of

      Lindel Williams (41 years old, body found September 21, 2007)

      Chevaughn White (22 years old, body found December 25, 2011)

      Dwayne Jones (16 years old, body found July 22, 2013)

      Gary Lewis (age unreported, body found on Dec 6, 2014)

      Randy Hentzel (48 years old, body found May 1, 2016)

      Harold Nichols (53 years old, body found May 1, 2016)

      Tanijah Howell (35 years old, body found February 18, 2017)

      James Miller (age unreported, body found May 14, 2017)

      Randal Riley (16 years old, body found June 2, 2017)

      Christopher Williams (28 years old, body found June 2, 2017)

      Desiree Gibbon (26 years old, body found November 26, 2017)

      Petrice Portious (21 years old, body found February 26, 2018)

      Joyan Myrie (21 years old, body found May 2, 2018)

      Kadijah Saunders (9 years old, body found June 5, 2018)

      Kimone Campbell (25 years old, body found June 9, 2018)

      Omar Earle (40, years old body found June 11, 2018)

      Leon Griffith (31, years old body found June 11, 2018)

      Dario Yearwood (27 years old, body found September 7, 2018)

      Daniel Griffith (37 years old, body found September 7, 2018)

      Andrew Haylett (34 years old, body found October 25, 2018)

      Monique Brown (23 years old, body found October 25, 2018)

      Nancy Hardy (72 years old, body found November 28, 2018)

      Barbara Findley (48 years old, body found December 5, 2018)

      Demar Stennett (20 years old, body found January 5, 2019)

      & these are only some.

      I

      HERE

      TRANSLATION OF A JAMAICAN CURSE

      ‘Guh dead ah bush!’

      Or else, you could say: may death wait for you

      in the undergrowth, the understory; may you drag yourself

      there, like a wounded dog towards the hem of hedges.

      And there, where is the darkness, where is the furnace

      of worms, where are the fallen leaves, may the world

      above you be a buzzing, colourless thing. May you feel

      the earth’s rhythm and weather and wear; may you think

      ‘of all places I have ended here’.

      THE UNDERSTORY

      Here that is the unplotted plot, the intriguing

      twist of vines, the messy dialogue – just listen

      how the leaves uh & ah & er nonstop.

      The ‘horse dead & cow fat’ is here, as well

      the sob story, the tall story & the same old story.

      Whomever did tell you there was two sides

      to every story is someone who don’t know the true

      nature of stories. Try two hundred, or two thousand,

      & they are all here. A web of Nansi story hangs thick

      between the trees. The original accounts

      of witnesses are here, as well a careful record

      of all subsequent changes; you may compare.

      The long bench is here, perfectly sized, that you might hear

      the long story that will not be cut short. Here where is

      the hard luck story, the likely & unlikely stories,

      & all the tales that were put on shelves,

      ‘Oh,’ the teller had said, waving a hand,

      ‘that’s a whole other story!’ Well, my dear,

      they are here – in the complication of roots, in the dirtiness

      of dirt. Are there stories you have heard about Jamaica?

      Well here are

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