James Miller was born and brought up in Keiss.  After some time furth of Scotland, he returned to live near Inverness in 1983.  His books about Caithness are out of print now.  His novel, A Fine White Stoor, about a present-day Caithness crofter and his land, was published in 1992.  This was followed in 1995 by his account of the Pentland Firth - A Wild and Open Sea.  His latest book is Salt in the Blood, telling the story of the fishing communities around the Scottish coast.  He's now working on a new book about Scapa Flow.

James also writes a weekly column in the Inverness Courier, on any subject that takes his fancy.  He acts as a tutor for an open-learning course at Inverness College and frequently does drama work.  As a member of Highland Poets, he writes poetry and experiments in some poem with using Caithness dialect, for which he has devised spelling system that strives to reproduce on page the sound of the Caithness accent.  For a long time now he has been compiling a dictionary of dialect, including research on grammar and etymology.

E ORD

Yin muckle hill at islands Caithness
glowers at ootshookimers
them tak thocht again afore they dare

Set foot or wheel on e rod at taks

Til e north wi a nether's twists an twines;
but e same high leipered flanks
are a welcome sicht til e homward chiel
fa looks an lachs an gies God thanks.

SATURDAY 15^TH JUNE 1996

Life unrolls at forty miles per hour
as whins drip gobbets of golden fire.
Kinkell, Shandwick, steep towered Tain.
The odds on England are two to one.
The Dornoch Firth is a sleeve of blue silk
ripped to bare cinnamon sickles of sand.
Kicked-off sharp at three o'clock.
In the Stag's Head they crack about the rules
of pitch and toss, and weight loss, over pints of heavy.
In the second half, Shearer puts one away.
The sea is an electric flash under the sky
beyond the beach where bairns are busy with time.
Helmsdale, Ousdale, Langwell's deep cleft.
A penalty. McAllister miskicks. Gazza doesn't.
In quietness of Latheronwheel harbour
fulmars, ignorant of football, voice other displeasures
and creels are silent in the sun.