Unspoiled Air

With her debut collection, Unspoiled Air, Kaisa Ullsvik Miller affirms the reader's perhaps heretofore unrecognized need for a gentle and daily massaging of profanely innocuous, even corporate language into deliverable spiritual meaning. This is a need that, once identified, becomes acute: We NEED to hear, for example, that "to create a deficiency or incompleteness in unique talents and abilities/ increase talents available for creating together. This is a partnership." Ullsvik Miller's radical patience with received truism allows for these paradoxically indispensable communiques to be communicated: "to provide for our needs,/ to protect us from dangerous destructive inconveniences/ we encounter// red waves/ the form of feelings We wander/ through our own guidance// . . ." In this work pronouns and referential infrastructure are blurred, allowing that feeling of incompleteness that is necessary for fresh perception. Thus communal bonds are made readily available.

KAISA ULLSVIK MILLER grew up near Madison, Wisconsin and was educated at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and Naropa University. Her most recent poetry and artwork can be found in journals including HUNGER, Bombay Gin, and Watching the Wheels: a Blackbird, as well as in the homes of friends. She lives in Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado.