"The richness and heft that is lost in the making of official accounts of the world is one of Miller’s favorite themes. Where the poet’s touch in Augustown becomes detectable is in the novel’s epigrammatic concision and in the loping, conversational cadence of so many of its sentences. The barely perceptible Caribbean lilt in Miller’s prose exerts a hypnotic effect that is one of the great pleasures of Augustown.An expansive talent, of a writer stretching to catch up with his own curiosity and fertility.The center of the novel, Miller’s portrait of Augustown, holds." Marlon James, author of Man Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings It’s the story of women haunted by women, and of the dangers of both keeping secrets and saying too much.” But then it gets you with twists and turns, it seduces and shocks you even as it wrestles with the very nature of storytelling itself.
At the very end of the event, when Kei was telling us about an incident where an English woman he was talking to kept insisting he did not have a Jamaican accent even after he pointed out that a liverpudlian accent and a west country accent are both English accents and are very different the lady seated in the row in front of me turned round and nodded, ‘That happens to me all the time, it makes you feel as though you need to change how you talk’. Some of the most interesting moments of the talk came from the audience’s questions which Kei had a huge depth of knowledge around. Kei discussed how through his writing he could restore Bedward’s honour in fiction by actually making him able to fly. He later proclaimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and was committed to an asylum.
Kei discussed how Bedward has become a subject of ridicule in Jamaican culture after he assured his followers they would be able to fly back to Africa and after drawing a huge crowd attempted this himself first which resulted in him breaking his legs. Kei’s talk initially focused on the Jamaican preacher Alexander Bedward, founder of Bedwardism which at the height of it’s popularity had over 30,000 followers. The first Black History Month event of 2016 which the residents were invited to draw at was author and poet Kei Miller discussing the themes behind his new book Augustown at Brixton Library. Black History Month: Kei Miller- Augustown at Brixton Library.
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