'Philip Miller has a keen eye for the beauties of nature and the brutalities of life. He has a keen ear, too: an ability to use his voice, and that of others, to exactly demarcate a time and place. His poems are lyrical, articulate and finely balanced. InBlame Yourself, the lift and heft of words is more than equal to the heavy weight of experience.'
- Alan Humm, Poet and Editor of One Hand Clapping
In this arresting and often unsettling collection of poems, Philip Miller cracks open the 'furious wreckage' of the human condition, with powerful effect. This is not poetry as therapy - there is no comfort here - but as unforgiving testimony. Not one of these poems lets the reader off the hook. The title, 'Blame Yourself', promises not to, andMiller's unflinching witness to human brokenness doesn't let us look away: there is too much truth here, and too much skill, to stop reading. Each poem hurts a little, and some a lot, but the craft is more than ample compensation.Millerexpertly navigates his dark themes in a way that offers the reader plenty to applaud and take delight in. His narratives are incredibly vivid - in 'Christmas' and 'Breakage', for example, and in 'Panic in Haymarket', which draws the reader so deeply into the moment that it took me a while to recover. His complex soundscapes ('Withershins') and his use of rhyme and near-rhyme ('Ledes (Montmartre) I') can feel simultaneously playful and threatening. Then there is his skilful summoning of a spectrum of voices, from the savage ('Spring returns, green / with its annual lies. / Like diseased sheep, / runners circle the park.') to the almost unbearably tender ('all my dreams of flying, / were my father carrying me to bed.') and everything in between. There is something at once both surreal and timeless about this book - the voices in these poems speak across times and places. Almost as soon as the detritus of the 21stcentury appears (plastic tubs, dildos, kebabs, possible apparitions in black mould on damp bedroom walls) we find ourselves back among timeless landscapes, timeless scenes, timeless encounters. InMiller's safe hands, all of this not only makes sense, but rings (painfully, yet beautifully) true.
This is, ultimately, a book that wins the reader's heart while breaking it. Once encountered, these poems - these voices - will call the reader back again and again.
- Mary Ford Neal, Poet
