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The Observances

Kate Miller

The Observances
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Categories: 21st Century, Art, First Collections
Imprint: OxfordPoets
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (88 pages)
(Pub. Apr 2015)
9781906188153
£9.99 £8.99
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Apr 2015)
9781906188283
£9.99 £8.99
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Winner of the 2016 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection.
    Shortlisted for the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize.
    Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Award.


    In the informal rituals of the tide remaking its tideline, of a painter absorbed in the act of painting or of an old couple greeting the night, the English poet Kate Miller sees and charts the creative process at work. As its title suggests, Miller’s striking début collection explores perception, the poet’s eye and ear trained on distances that stretch beyond comfort zones. This is a book full of movement: even quiet reflections on home and family life are rarely still. Throughout the collection Miller dwells on the unfixed and restless image and shows herself as subject to it – to the difficult illusion of physical energy in sculpture, to the changeability of skies and the insistent rhythm and presence of the sea.
    Kate Miller is an award-winning poet, recipient of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Prize in 2008. Her book The Observances (2015) was shortlisted for the Costa and Michael Murphy Prizes and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Collection. Trained in Art History and Fine Art, her teaching career was ... read more
    Awards won by Kate Miller Commended, 2020 A Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation (The Long Beds) Short-listed, 2017 Michael Murphy Poetry Prize (The Observances) Short-listed, 2015 Costa Book Awards (The Observances) Winner, 2016 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (The Observances)
    'In collaboration with the waves'
    The Observer
    'An ambitious and unusual debut.'
    Judges for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection  
    'The quiet but intense sensibility of the author is integral to her poetic endeavour.'
    Dr Leontia Flynn, Chair of Judges for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection
    Praise for Kate Miller
    'The Long Beds is a sensuous study of light and optics which showcases Miller's ability to imbue even the shortest of verses with a cross disciplinary visual aesthetic.'

    Sarah-Jean Zubair, Poetry Review

    'Beneath the surface of even the seemingly safest of poems, there is something lurking, almost as in old folk tales, a danger or a disquiet which is never far away [...] collection. It's a collection which is always shifting its voice, its gaze, its locations. Almost like a riptide, the sleeping and waking worlds pulling in different directions, these are the poems which come in between, which rise up to the surface.'

    Andrew McMillian, PBS Autumn Bulletin

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