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Scotia Review - Poets |
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James
Miller
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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. |
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| Critics' comments: | |
| A Fine White Stoor | |
| 'one of the most accurate evocations of Caithness country life ever written' | Donald Campbell, Chapman |
| 'nigh-on impossible to put down' | Hector MacKenzie, John O'Groat Journal |
| A Wild and Open Sea | |
| ' a must for anyone interested in psychology, topography and history of the northern areas of Scotland | George Gunn, The Scotsman |
| 'a weave of hard fact and nostalgia, legend and statistics, and destined to become a definitive work' | Jim Hewitson, The Herald |
| Salt in the Blood | |
| 'one of the best histories of the Scottish fishing industry | Bob Kennedy, Press and Journal |
| 'One of the great strengths of this book is the time spent... in travelling the length of Scotland, interviewing fishermen' | James Nicolson, Shetland Times |
| 'Salt in the Blood is a prime catch' | Margaret
Chrystall, Highland News
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E ORD Yin muckle hill at islands
Caithness Set foot or wheel on e rod at taks Til e north wi a nether's
twists an twines;
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SATURDAY 15TH JUNE 1996 Life unrolls at forty miles
per hour |
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