Late Inscriptions by David Miller (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press)

Since the death of his wife Dodo (the philosopher Doreen Maitre) in 2022, much of David Miller’s work has been an elegiac exploration of grief. Late Inscriptions continues this theme and phase in his poetry as Miller recounts and reimagines, remembers and re-members in his attempt to commune with the dead and navigate grief.He writes in the minimalist style derived from the great US poet and mystic Robert Lax. Keith Jebb has noted that Miller admires Lax immensely and says that ‘few have pitched words in space, found the pitch of words, like Miller and Lax.’ When I interviewed him in 2023, Miller said that Lax was exemplary for him, both as a writer and as a person, and emphasised the ‘strong, even severe strand of minimalism in a good deal of his work’. What this means in practice is that each word used is significant because each word bears meaning. Miller leans on and stresses each word because they bear the weight of sorrow. Jebb says that Miller creates ‘with a balance of minimalism, repetition and the abstract, words isolated and ringing.’A similar minimalism is also to be found in the content of these poems. In the words of the Del Amitri song, in these poems ‘nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all’. Harriet Neville notes the happenings as being: a bird landing on the door, waiting to be fed; a dog entering the bedroom through an open back door; and Belgian waffles and eggs Florentine shared with old friends. Although nothing significant seems to happen, actually everything happens and we, as is the poet, are changed.It is not just words that become significant in poetry and grief but also events and activities of any kind, whatever they may be. Each and every event is a potential trigger for emotion or memories and a potential healing agent enabling the one grieving to cope in the face of loss. Attention is paid to each event or activity and is rewarded as all are meaning-full.Addressing simultaneously both ourselves as reader and Dodo, his late wife, Miller moves seamlessly between event and memory, action and reflection in his sharing of his grief journey. While inscriptions are usually permanent markers of significance, these inscriptions shift and change in the moment, as minute by minute, page by page, we move beyond them. What counts, as Neville identifies, is the activity of recounting and reflecting:

To speak –        

to not speak –          

to write –             

through – and out   

With the simplest of elements sparely rendered, Miller tenderly explores the paradox of love and loss by weaving together fragmented memories ‘coloured by grief’. As Jebb comments, ‘No other contemporary poet does this so skilfully, or with such honesty.’ Between Late Inscriptions and Eight Poems, both of which cover similar ground, is a short Untitledpoem for Rupert Loydell on the subject of prayer. Loydell has been a supporter of Miller over the years and published The ABCs of Robert Lax, edited by Nicholas Zurbrugg and Miller, which includes essays and tributes from many poets, writers and critics. This poem was originally published by Loydell’s Stride Magazine as part of a series of poems inspired by The Prayer, an art-installation by German artist Diemut Strebe, that tries to explore the supernatural through artificial intelligence. Miller’s response is that while, in this installation, ‘A mouth speaks’, it is ‘not mine’. What is his, as Miller himself has articulated, is the care for ‘each and every syllable’ that he finds in Lax’s poetry and practises in his own. A ‘gentle yet strong focus, lucidity and faithfulness of the act of attention (to words, to the things and the people around him, to whatever he names in poems)’ that ‘constitutes one of the most salient features of Lax’s poetry’ and also of his own.

Jonathan Evens 23^rd August 2026