Alice Miller is the author of three collections of poetry, What Fire (Liverpool University Press, 2021), Nowhere Nearer, and The Limits, as well as a novel, More Miracle than Bird (Tin House, 2020). She grew up in Māhina Bay and Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and studied at Victoria University, the International Institute of Modern Letters, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Berlin.
Miller comments: 'I drafted this poem on a train heading up the Kāpiti coast, struck by the sheer amount of matter passing outside the windows, as well as flickering past on everyone’s phones and tablets. It seemed excessive; how could anyone be expected to make sense of it all? The book this poem comes from, What Fire, asks questions about catastrophes, and our culpability for these catastrophes. How we assemble information leads us to strange and disturbing conclusions. Our day-to-day utterances—like "this is us"—can be unthinking declarations of power. Living in our current moment (as well as living in Berlin, the same city from which my Jewish grandmother once had to flee), these questions only feel more and more pressing. Who says when and what is "after" a catastrophe?'
Links
What Fire at Unity Books in New Zealand; Audiatur in Norway; Liverpool University Press in the UK; Oxford University Press in the USA; and Dussmann in Germany