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David Miller was born in Melbourne,
Australia, in 1950, and has lived in London since 1972.
His first books were The Caryatids
(Enitharmon Press) and South London Mix (Gaberbocchus Press),
both published in 1975. He has since published many collections of
poetry and prose, including The Story (Arc Publications, 1976),
Unity (Singing Horse Press, 1981), Pictures of Mercy
(Stride, 1991), Stromata (Burning Deck Press, 1995), Collected
Poems (University of Salzburg Press, 1997), Art and Disclosure
(Stride, 1998) and Spiritual Letters (1-12) (hawkhaven press,
1999). The Waters of Marah is due from Singing Horse Press (Philadelphia) in June 2003.
His work has been included in a number of anthologies, including The New
British Poetry, 1968-1988, ed. Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar, Ken
Edwards and Eric Mottram (Paladin, 1988), A State of Independence,
ed. Tony Frazer (Stride, 1998), One Score More: The Second 20 Years
of Burning Deck, ed. Alison Bundy and Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop
(Burning Deck, 2002) and So also ist das / So That's What It's
Like: Eine zweisprachige Anthologie britischer Gegenwartslyrik,
ed. Wolfgang Görtschacher and Ludwig Laher (Haymon-Verlag,
2002). His writing has been celebrated in the Stride book, At the
Heart of Things: the poetry and prose of David Miller (1994).
Other discussions of his writing can be found in an essay by Robert
Hampson in New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible, ed. R.
Hampson and Peter Barry (Manchester University Press, 1993), Michael
Thorp's Breaking at the Fountain: A Meditation on the Work of David
Miller (Stride, 1998), and Tim Woods' long essay, '"Thought
itself, ruptured": The Spiritual Materialist Poetics of David
Miller', The Poet's Voice, New Series, Vol. 4(2), 1998.
Miller left school at sixteen,
subsequently working in unskilled jobs for over a decade. He returned
to education when he was 28, studying for a BA in History of Ideas at
Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University). He went on to gain a
doctorate in English Literature at the University of London. His
doctoral thesis was published as W. H. Hudson and the Elusive
Paradise (Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1990).
He has worked as a librarian,
primarily at University College London, where he was responsible for
the Little Magazines and Small Press Collection, and is currently a
Research Fellow in English Literature at Nottingham Trent University.
He co-organised several exhibitions of small press books, poetry
magazines and related publications at the Royal Festival Hall, Durham
University Library, Staffordshire Polytechnic, University College
London, workfortheeyetodo and Nottingham Trent University. Most
recently, he curated 'A Guide for the Perplexed', an exhibition of
poetry magazines at the Centre for Artist Books (University of
Dundee).
Amongst his other activities, he has
been an art critic, and an Associate Editor (with Origin and Poetry
Salzburg Review) and Editorial Correspondent (with First
Intensity). He currently co-organises the poetry reading series,
Crossing the Line, at the Poetry Café in London.
His mentor as a writer was the late
Robert Lax, and he also learned from his friendships with other
writers, especially the late Edouard Roditi. He feels blessed to have
known Lax and Roditi, as well as a handful of his contemporaries, such
as Guy Birchard and William Cirocco.
More details of his life can be found
in the essay he wrote for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series,
Gale Research, vol. 30, 1999.
The Caryatids,
Enitharmon Press, London, 1975
South London Mix, Gaberbocchus Press, London, 1975
Malcolm Lowry and the Voyage that Never Ends, Enitharmon Press,
London, 1976
The Story, Arc Publications, Todmorden, 1976
Primavera, Burning Deck Press, Providence,
Rhode Island, 1979
Unity, Singing Horse Press, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, 1981 [spd]
Out of this World, Spectacular Diseases Press, Peterborough, 1984 [spd]
The Claim, Northern Lights, London, 1984
Losing to Compassion, Origin Press, Kyoto, 1985
Darkness Enfolding, Stride, Exeter, 1989
Messages, Torque Press, Southampton, 1989
W. H. Hudson and the Elusive Paradise, Macmillan and St. Martin's
Press, London and NY, 1990
Cards (with John Levy), Sow's Ear Press, Staffordshire, 1991
Pictures of Mercy: Selected Poems, with artwork by Graham Gussin, Stride, Exeter, 1991 [spd]
The Break, Trombone Press, Exeter, 1991
True Points, Spectacular Diseases Press, Peterborough, 1992 [spd]
Tesserae, Stride, Exeter, 1993
A path a lake the very breath, with artwork by Andrew Bick, RMG
Publications, London, 1994
Stromata, Burning Deck
Press, Providence, Rhode Island, 1995 [spd]
The Book of the Spoonmaker, Cloud, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1995
Elegy, Oasis Books, London, 1996
Collected Poems, University of Salzburg
Press, Salzburg, 1997
Spiritual Letters (1-10), with artwork by Andrew Bick, EMH
Arts/Eagle Graphics, London, 1997
Appearance & Event, Paradigm Press, Providence, Rhode Island, 1997 [spd]
Art and Disclosure, Stride, Exeter, 1998 [spd]
Spiritual Letters (1-12), hawkhaven press, San Francisco,
California, 1999 [hawkhaven or spd]
Commentaries,
tel-let, Charleston, Illinois, 1999
From: Commentaries, Kater Murr's
Press, Piraeus, Greece, 1999
Dark Ground, Wild Honey
Press, Bray, Co. Wicklow, 2000
Commentaries (II), Runaway Spoon Press, Port Charlotte, Florida,
2000
Spiritual Letters (Series 2, #1-5), with artwork by Denis Mizzi,
Nyxpress, Sydney, Australia, 2001
The Waters of Marah, Singing Horse Press,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 2003. Available from Singing
Horse Press or spd.
Spiritual Letters (I-II) and other
writings is now available from Reality Street Editions (63 All Saints
Street, Hastings, Sussex TN34 3BN). The book sells for £6.50 per copy
(please add £1 for postage & packing for a single copy if ordering
direct from the publisher). For further details please see the Reality
Street web site: http://freespace.virgin.net/reality.street/
or spd.
note
Books marked [spd]
are available for purchase from Small Press Distribution, www.spdbooks.org
The Waters of Marah brings together various of Miller's prose
writings - in particular, his poetry in prose - from 1973 to 1995.
"These eighteen texts, published in tiny editions over the past
thirty years and many long out of print, have been prized by poets and
readers on both sides of the Atlantic." (Gil Ott)
"Miller is a
scholar-poet, a reader of both Book and World, a seeker of truth whatever
the enormous semantic and philosophical problems associated with such an
enterprise...."
Kris Hemensley, Post-Neo
"David Miller's work
extracts a quintessence of existence; sifting and resifting the lessons of
perception, of 'raw' experience, in order to define just what it means to
be alive, and think."
Norman Jope, Memes
"In all of Miller's
work there is this precision and fullness, the act of writing becoming a
way of dreaming more fully.... Of all the present writers in English...
Miller is the closest to Mallarmé, not in any formal or recognisable
imitation, but in the way both behave when they write. What Julia Kristeva
learned from her analysis of the great Symbolist poet could probably be
discerned as easily from Miller's poetry. This is high praise
indeed."
Tim Allen, Terrible Work
"These two directions
in Miller's poetry - the critique of the material world and the approach
to the spiritual - are intricately interconnected, and by no means
mutually exclusive. Indeed, they seem to form part of a deeply felt
ethical imperative at work in his poetry: an imperative which forges its
social critique on the basis of an ethical spirituality."
Tim Woods, The Poet's Voice
"...a kind of poésie
noire, an urban poetry of shadows and glimpses, street lamps and whispers.
The crucial relationship between word and life is ultimately mysterious,
inimitable and unknowable, yet its existence surfaces most convincingly in
the poem."
Fred Muratori (on Stromata), American Book Review
"If 'experiences at the
limit of what can be apprehended' be the working definition of 'sublime',
then Miller's is and is not a sublime work, since it hovers within and
beyond the limits of what can be apprehended, and in this is a speculative
and phenomenological poetry."
Norma Cole (on Spiritual Letters (1-12)), First Intensity
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