Praise for Blame Yourself

‘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. In Blame 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, and Miller’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. Miller expertly 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 21^st century 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. In Miller’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

Philip Miller

Philip Miller grew up in County Durham and lives in Edinburgh. For 20 years he was a journalist for newspapers including The Scotsman, The Sunday Times in Scotland and The Herald. His poetry has been published online and in print. His novels are The Blue Horse (2015), All the Galaxies (2017) and The Goldenacre (2022), witha new novel to come in 2024.