NOMINATED FOR A PUSHCART PRIZE 2020
Unsolicited Press (Portland, OR) chose “Cairn” among its many fine publications this year, as a nominee for one of the most respected literary awards in the country. It is a great honor just to be nominated and I am grateful to UP for this affirmation.
SENT IN BY SATISFIED READERS
BOOKS
Cairn, Poems & Essays
These poems and essays are small cairns pointing forward or inward on the human journey. They mark a trace each reader will recognize and illuminate the terrain more clearly.
This collection is a fusion, with the poems felt reverberating in the heart and below, the essays worming their way into the brain and memory. Miller’s first poem to survive after birth was discovered in a fortune cookie, another swimming in a cup of coffee. This is not your English teacher’s poetry.
After decades of reading and ogling poetry, Cameron Miller made room among the novels, newspaper columns, and preaching to hone poems amidst the wild beauty of northern-most Vermont and the pastoral beauty of the Finger Lakes. The elements of nature are this poet’s paint but he also paddles a gondola through the dark channels of the mind while lighting the way. Both poems and essays work on the reader from two direction, the brain down and the ground up. Poems like “I want to be Mary Oliver” seem whimsical at first but quickly instigate a new look at an old subject. Poems that immediately jump into deep water like “Depression,” offer a sense of liberation via blunt and unvarnished authenticity. Cairn speaks from these two hemispheres of the human experience in a way that aids those who start out with discomfort around poetry. It quickly demonstrate that poetry need not be a strange or inaccessible medium after all.
Author interview from Unsolicited Press, on the occasion of Cairn’s release
LINK: http://www.unsolicitedpress.com/blog/a-new-interview-with-cameron-miller-author-of-cairn-july-2020
Thoughtwall Café, Espresso in the Third Season of Life
This novel is written about millennials for millennials, and for every generation now looking back at their twenties. It is a turbocharged twenty-first-century update of “The Fall,” by Albert Camus, but it is retrofitted for today’s twenty-somethings to do battle with those pernicious conundrums of the mind even Socrates and Freud fumbled.
Cressida Fruith, who changed her name in high school from Ruth while pulling an Emo persona over her life, is coming apart at the seams. An only child of a single parent with no extended family, she watches helplessly as her mother’s cancer progresses. Even the friendship of her oldest and best friend begins to fray. Enter Hobart Wilson, a much-maligned outcast stoner from her high school days. He infuriatingly becomes her mother’s closest companion, and confessor of a secret so dark and violent it will change Cressida’s future.
The Steam Room Diaries
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or order through your local bookstore!
What if the most sacred place on earth was not on a mountaintop, not in a cathedral or mosque, but in a dank dilapidated men’s steam room? That is where a defrocked priest encounters life and death, sex, drugs, and even rock ‘n roll in this spiritual fiction.
Here is a short essay on Medium.com:
Poems
“Listening to Dark Angels” in Poetry Quarterly
, Summer Issue
http://prolificpress.com/bookstore/poetry-quarterly-c-1/poetry-quarterly-summer-2015-p-150.html
WAITING SERIES “Alone Again at the Wok ‘N Roll” by Cameron Miller h
ttps://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/alone-again-at-the-wok-n-roll-by-cameron-miller-i-am-waiting-poetry-series/
WHERE I LIVE SERIES: “Eleven Below in Vermont” by Cameron Miller
https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/eleven-below-in-vermont-by-cameron-miller-where-i-live-poetry-photography-series/
“My Father Died Last Night” and “Wind on Snow” by Cameron Miller appearing in http://prolificpress.com/bookstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=105
The poem, “Mother Teresa’s God” appears in this international anthology available Eyewear Press (UK). Over two hundred poets from around the world explore the quest
Speaking, Readings, and Author Visits
Novelist, poet, and preacher, Cameron Miller, is available to schedule a visit to your church or group for a lecture, worship, or conversation. This is a review from an evening presentation at Canisius College.
A mesmerizing evening of fiction and theological reflection, carefully pitched at the intersections of spirituality and secularity…Cameron Miller’s lecture was a most challenging and enjoyable event!
Dr. Timothy Wadkins, Director Institute for the Global Study of Religion, Canisius College, Buffalo NY
Bravo! Well done, Cam.
This is beautiful Cam. I’m so glad that you introduced us to these ideas at Trinity Episcopal Church in Buffalo, where we continue this work on Sunday evenings at 7:00. The possibilities of mysticism and spirituality are vast. Many people feel this way, but your words give shape and direction: “committed to sharing ideas, insights, and practice for those seeking to build or sustain an authentic spiritual community….” I hope that you will be posting audio files of your sermons. Congratulations on the publications of your poetry – the world deserves you.
High praise coming from you who taught me so much. Thanks. Cam
Love this Cam. Yaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks
Looks interesting can’t wait
Thanks for tuning in!
Cam is a con-man for our Lord!
Haha!
Hi Cam
Don’t know if you remember we but I was a parishioner at St. Stephen’s in Columbus OH. You pretty much ruined me for any other church. I’ve never found another priest or community that shared my values to the extent that you and that community did. Thank you very much! Hope you’re doing well.
best,
Jennifer
Hey Jennifer! I sure do remember but I don’t want to be the ruination of such an important resource in your life. There must be a community out there (wherever there is). I’ll help you look. Cam
Cam – its cool. I didn’t mean ruination badly and my thanks are sincere. I actually think its great because it showed what a real spiritual community/practice should look like! Like your sermon today – there’s a difference between church and spiritual practice. My first church experience after I left Columbus was the Episcopal Church on the University of Miami campus where I joined the faculty. I went once, filled out a card and never heard from anyone until I got a letter for the annual pledge drive. After that I moved to Wisconsin where I was faculty at the University of WI, Platteville. Not a huge range of choices there because its a really small town. I left academia in 2008 – one of the best decisions of my life! Since then I’ve mainly been overseas – Haiti (2.5 years starting right after the earthquake), Pakistan for almost 3 years (again not a lot of church choices) and now Kenya where I’ve been for almost a year – so finding the kind of church you and the St. Stephen’s community provided would be really challenging! I’m totally ok with my spiritual practice and finding community in other ways. But I’m super happy to reconnect with you and I’m sure that your sermons and other musings that I’m now subscribed to will really help my spiritual practice just like they did when I was in grad school! I hope you and your family are well. Take care! Jenn/Janek
The good they die young
For the record, Cam ruined me, too. It’s been 21 years since I felt at home in any church, St. Stephen’s in Cam’s time as rector. Just recently, I have found a new church home, St. Richard’s, Orlando. Cam and St. Stephen’s set a very high bar.
While I am grateful and humbled by your appreciation, ALLELUIA! you and St. Richard’s found each other. Hugs, prayers, and hopes to you.
Hi Cam, I just read your post “The Core” and enjoyed it very much. In fact I would like permission to use it in a sermon I will be doing in another month. What are the limitations for using this post? Thanks, Leroy Wise
Hi Cam…. you won’t remember me but you were and always will be my favorite Priest, when you were at St. Matt’s in Indy.
Fondly,
Rosie Watson (Elbreg)
Of course I remember you Rosie! So wonderful to hear from you. I’m glad to know we are connected.
The WEDNESDAY group at Trinity would love to have the chance to see you in the flesh!!!! And talk, chat etcetera. Are you actually in Geneva? Not so far away, used to take us a reasonable amount of time when we visited friends. I am ?ing my recall of your last blog!!!! If so, we “could set up visit. It would be so great to see you. Fingers crossed that it might be possible. It’s a good dream or hallucination??? Nina(Nini!!) P.S. let me know if I am dreaming!
Awesome! Come on over, it’s not so far. I sent you a response to your email.
Cam, I was referred to your website and I love your work by Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News. I think you are one of us, so please consider coming to our 2019 conference in Buffalo June 20-23, 2019 at Buffalo State College. We will be staying at the Henry Urban Visit (www.columnists.com) to find out more about your tribe. I’m a spirituality columnist, too, for GateHouse Media. Really nice to read your work! — Suzette Martinez Standring (www.readsuzette.com)
Hi Cam,Your are such an inspiration to me and the Moot family ! One of my favorite pictures is of my parents Rit and Barbara and you towering over them and your long arms warped around them.both in the middle in front of Trinity in Buffalo. When I think of them passing, looking at this picture gives me comfort.I would love a signed copy of your new book and have pay pal. God Bless you.
Michel Moot
Your parents were wonderful, committed people. I know you must miss them greatly. I’d love to see that pic. I’ll set you up with the book. Thank you!
I truly wish to hear more – my husband reads you all the time (Steve Oles). I was Catholic growing up & would like to hear from someone who isn’t. The Catholic church is a real disappointment to me. We went to a church back in Mass. & enjoyed Peter Chase very much – he married us. So I would be happy to be on your list! Susan Thompson