David Miller: Time, Wisdom, & Koalas

The latest book from the wonderfully prolific David Miller is Time, Wisdom, & Koalas, a new work of fantastic fiction:

"David Miller is a writer with not only fantasy, but a depth of feeling and philosophical content. Yet, one feels a sense of whimsy as well. What he imparts to the reader is often done with a gentle and beautiful subtlety that stays with one long after the book has been closed."--Gloria Coates

"Meet Norm. E. T. A. Hoffmann didn't write about koalas. He didn't write about Norm. But in a parallel universe, where Herne Bay had been a concentration camp, he could have. David Miller wrote Norm. Or maybe Norm dreamt himself, because Norm is very wise. And he sleeps. A lot."--Keith Jebb

"'Despite what the first pages may suggest, this is most definitely not a children's tale.' Or so we're told. It's more like what Byron thought about 'true poetry': that 'tis the part/ Of a true poet to escape from fiction'. David Miller escapes from fiction in 'spirit dreams' he learned from a certain Koala named Norman, who seems to have passed them along through a certain wombat named Archie. If I told you any more about David's escapes you'd think I was making it up, or maybe that I just dreamed it all. But as David once said - I think he was at Felpham - 'you can never tell about these things.'"--Jerome McGann

"It may be impossible to describe Time, Wisdom, and Koalas. It may be impossible even to think who might read such a book. But having written a book about philosophical frogs myself, I'm open to the possibility that there are sufficient numbers of wildly imaginative, erudite, fauna-loving readers ready for a serious romp through time, space, and the history of ideas, to make this odd book a best-seller."--Gail Holst-Warhaft

David Miller was born in Melbourne, Australia, but has lived in the UK for many years. His recent publications include SPIRITUAL LETTERS (SERIES 1-5) (Chax Press, 2011), Reassembling Still: Collected Poems (Shearsman Books, 2014), SPIRITUAL LETTERS (Contraband Books, 2017 / Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), TOWARDS A MENAGERIE (Chax Press, 2019), Matrix I & II (Guillemot Press, 2020), Some Other Days and Nights (above/ground press, 2021), Afterword (Shearsman Books, 2022), circle square triangle (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), An Envelope for Silence (above/ground press, 2022) and Some Other Shadows (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2022). He is also a painter and a musician.

For his next publication (close), I've written the following appreciation:

"David Miller examines words and phrases as if they are displayed on a rotating stand enabling us to view them from a myriad of different perspectives. In his poetry, prose and prose poems, things are never simply what they seem; there is always something more, something deeper, something beyond. Whether creating expansive word collages or paring poems down to their constituent parts, he is a skilled craftsperson utilising concision, elision, contrast and paradox to open up meanings as one opens up Matryoshka Dolls. At the heart of his vision are pathways leading us to the experience of expanse."

In reviewing Some Other Shadows for Stride Magazine, I wrote that:

"David Miller, under the influence of the sublime RobertLax, is past and present master of just such a contemplative approach. Both combine close attention to each word chosen, the resonances of each word, and that word’s position on the page, with an equally close attention to the ordinary events of daily life and the depths that their words reveal of those events ...

Miller’s like and unlike images, questions and thoughts – affirmations and negations - are held together to form a whole that is simple yet complex, without contradiction because both are owned and honoured ...

Miller writes of Lax, that “it is the gentle yet strong focus, lucidity and faithfulness of the act of attention (to words, to the things and the people around him, to whatever he names in poems) that constitutes one of the most salient features of Lax’s poetry and also his life.” The same focus can be seen in Miller’s more diverse and genre crossing works and it is this core to his approach – whatever the genre – that becomes a model, not just for poetry, but also for life."

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David Miller & SpiritWORK - memory water flowing.