Scanning the Horizon

Mark Miller was born in Warren in western New South Wales. He attended school in Orange before graduating with an Honours degree in English Literature at the University ofNew England in Armidale. His first book of poems, Conversing With Stones, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award in 1989 and his second, This Winter Beach, was published in 1999. Scanning the Horizon is Mark's long-awaited third collection, featuring many poems which have won national awards, including the Henry Lawson Open Poetry Prize (2015, 2018), the Rolf Boldrewood Open Poetry Prize (2008, 2016), the Queensland Fellowship of Australian Writers Poetry Prize (2008, 2015) and the Vera Newsom Poetry Prize (2009). Written with the same sharp eye for detail and spare, precise imagery as his previous two books, poems in Scanning the Horizon are vivid, alive and spontaneous in their celebrations of family and the richness and joys of nature. It is a powerful and elegant collection by a poet in control of his forms and speaking in ways that are fresh and distinctive.
'Acute observations of the natural world, especially the Shoalhaven district of the south coast of New South Wales, coupled with brilliant and evocative vistas… In Scanning the Horizon, Mark Miller has created an intensely private world that is also as universal as the sunlight that illuminates it…' - Peter Skrzynecki