Groceries
by Nora Claire MillerGroceries is a book about what to do about objects.
>Debut full-length poetry book
>Winner of the Fonograf Open Genre Prize
>Foreward by Srikanth Reddy
>Released October 21 2025.
>Winner of the Fonograf Open Genre Prize
>Foreward by Srikanth Reddy
>Released October 21 2025.
Advance praise for Groceries
“Not since Tender Buttons has a book so thoroughly defamiliarized the world tout court.”
—Srikanth Reddy
“When reading Miller’s work: if it is at all possible to do or say anything new in poetry, this is probably where you’ll see it first. Groceries, their debut collection, is a perfect example.”
—Lloyd Wallace, Poetry Daily“I’m delighted to see Nora Claire Miller’s engaging book, Groceries, out and about. This daring, demanding, experimental and meditative work encourages conceptual thought about the performance space of the two dimensions. In this way, it is on par with Edwin A. Abbott’s classic novel, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. While firmly planted in this reality, Groceries nevertheless encourages us to read between the lines and into the negative spaces that stable and precocious squares seek to shape. If the world is round, what are we doing in it as “squares” ourselves? How do we perceive them? How are they looking at, and as, us? The literal and figured imagery in Miller’s debut collection offer fresh ways of considering metaphor, simile and concreteness in poetry. It's a muscular read that requires our attention. This collection asks us to seriously and playfully consider how we shape our everyday lives, how we’re boxed out, and in."
—Tracie Morris
"A book is a box with emptiness in it: □. This is a book. An author is university with rain inside it. This book is written by Nora Claire Miller. Who is Nora Claire Miller? ‘my name is nonce, my name is nobody, who the hell are you.’ That’s what they say in the book they wrote, which is called Groceries. Groceries is a book with emptiness in it, empty boxes, universities, rain, human beings. They look like this: □□□□□. Who the hell am I, Nora Claire Miller asks me. I am a character that my phone cannot recognize: □. There is a book here called Groceries and Nora Claire Miller is its author. Its reader is an empty box, a university, a curtain of rain, a human being. If you are one or more of those things, please check the box: □."
—Toby Altman
“Buckle up, earthlings!!! Nora Claire Miller is taking your data body to the Coral Ridge mall via deep space. They want to show you its habitat. They want you to stare into the compound eye of the machine we pay to watch us. Hey scantron crucible, hey wheel of fortune! Hey paper world, these words are scratched into the cloud that’s been messing with your head. Oh no! has been talking things over with Oh yes! Groceries is a breathtaking debut."
—Elizabeth Willis
“Groceries is a fiercely playful, hilariously deadpan catalogue of “life on earth” among the stuff of supermarket capitalism—refrigerators, oatmeal, Ziploc, Microsoft Word, the floating coins of video games and day jobs. “There are places / where the ⎕ goes dead” it says, but Nora Claire Miller breaks our codes so the ⎕ can stay alive and full of possibility. A brilliant debut by a poet to watch.”
—David Gorin
Interviews & Press
On Progress and Regression - new books - The Paris Review
Nora Claire Miller on “Rumor” - Poetry Society of America
An indoor sort of rain: An Interview with Nora Claire Miller - Lloyd Wallace in Poetry Daily
from “Groceries” - Cleveland Review of Books