Catching Up With Kristen Renee Miller

Where can we read some of your recent work?

Since publishing with Tinderbox, most of my projects have involved either translation or visual poetry. My visual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Best New Poets, Container’s Look Books series, and DIAGRAM. And I’m really excited about this animated review of Claire Wahmanholm’s Wilder that I got to make this summer for RHINO.

My translation of Marie-Andrée Gill’s book, Spawn, debuted in April 2020. Gill is an award-winning Indigenous poet from Quebec who writes about territory, interiority, and decolonial love. Selections are published at The Kenyon Review, The Common, Guernica, and The Offing. You can find Spawn on Bookshop.org or order it through your local independent bookstore. (Support your local booksellers!!) 

What are you reading right now? 

These days I’m working from home with a toddler, so much of my reading happens via audiobook on my nightly walks through the neighborhood. I’ve gained a new appreciation for poets and writers who read beautifully for their own audiobooks. (Almost like attending a reading!) Here are some favorites I can’t stop recommending, not just as books, but as readings: Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead, by Danez Smith, The Carrying, by Ada Limón, An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes, Wade in the Water and Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith, Universal Harvester and Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle, In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado, The Idiot, by Elif Batuman, and Florida, by Lauren Groff.

What’s next for you? 

I’ve just signed on to translate Marie-Andrée Gill’s latest poetry collection, Chauffer le dehors, due out in English from Book*hug Press in 2022. I’m looking forward to working with her poetry again. 

Bio:

Kristen Renee Miller is the managing editor for Sarabande. Her poems and translations have appeared in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, The Common, Guernica, and Best New Poets 2018. She is the translator of Spawn, by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill, and the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.