Poem
Kei Miller
I. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER EXPLAINS HIMSELF
I. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER EXPLAINS HIMSELF
I. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER EXPLAINS HIMSELF
You might saymy job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –
the sudden creeping pace,
the consultation with trees and blue
fences and whatever else
might prove a landmark.
My job is to imagine the widening
of the unfamiliar and also
the widening ache of it;
to anticipate the ironic
question: how did we find
ourselves here? My job is
to untangle the tangled,
to unworry the concerned,
to guide you out from cul-de-sacs
into which you may have wrongly turned.
© 2015, Kei Miller
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From the sequence \'The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion\'.
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
Kei Miller
(Jamaica, 1978)
‘You might say
my job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –‘
Quick introduction
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet who has been making an international furore on the poetry scene since his first collection Kingdom of empty bellies came out in 2006. His collections and novels have won numerous awards, up to and including his most recent collection Things I...
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I. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER EXPLAINS HIMSELF
You might saymy job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –
the sudden creeping pace,
the consultation with trees and blue
fences and whatever else
might prove a landmark.
My job is to imagine the widening
of the unfamiliar and also
the widening ache of it;
to anticipate the ironic
question: how did we find
ourselves here? My job is
to untangle the tangled,
to unworry the concerned,
to guide you out from cul-de-sacs
into which you may have wrongly turned.
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
From the sequence \'The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion\'.
I. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER EXPLAINS HIMSELF
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