Like The Last Warner Woman, Miller's third poetry collection is comprised of a rich mix of voicings and testimonies. Divided into two sections, day time and night time, A Light Song of Light travels a broad and imaginitive sweep through the possible manifestations and occassions of song. It asks how a song, and by extension, poettry, is possible 'in dark/times, in wolk time and knife time,/ in knuckle and blood times' ('Twelve Notes for a Light Song of Light').
Perhaps the major strength of Miller's poetic voice is its range, from the restrained humour of 'a found poem' that is 'Notice to the Public, Please Observe' to the prevailing lyricism and addictive incantatory rhythms of much of his poetry, to the striking imagery and directness of examples such as 'Some Definitions for Light (II).'

-(Noun) The lungs of butchered animals are called lights. I have sometimes wonderd if they pray- if, before the blade falls, cows and sheep and ducks fill their lungs with the weight of their dying, the nothingness to come, if their final sounds are light calling out to light.

The weight given to the words and thinking here- the three perfectly measured and delicate 'ifs' that the poem is poised on- demonstrate that Miller possesses a fine ear and has no fear of the prose poem. It is this queter, more reflective mode that is behind the power of a poem such as 'Unsung' and the way it plots, carefully manoeuvring the reader toward the moment of its final lines: 'There should be a song/ for the man whose life has not been the stuff of ballads/ but has lived his life in incredible and untrumpeted ways./There should be a song for a myfather.' Similarly, in 'The Longest Song' inspired by John Cage's composition, As slow as possible, a piece of music intenede to be played over 639 years, it is the clarity and restraint of Miller's writing that allowed his ideas their fullest emotional power:

The longest song begins like a comma,
a rest that lasts for eighteen months.
Long enough that when the firt chord is
heard, surprising as an extinct bird come b
ack to life, many cannot stop their tears.
And one man has told his wife he plans
to weep until the music has reached its next rest.

Again, Miller's writing works best when meaning and sound are marrie in the line, as they are here, in the straining and desperation shadowing 'reached its next rest'.
The collection benefits from its eclectic gathering of voices and forms, drawing upon praise songs, charms and anecdotes as well as creating smaller sequences within the larger structure. The latter include the beautifully observed detail and intimate monents of 'A Short History of Beds We Have Slept In Together', the compelling riffs of the opening 'Twelve Notes for a Light Song of Light', the haunting figure of the Singerman connecting the two sections andwho is based on a figure from 1930s Jamaica hired to sing to gangs building rads, as well as a sequence of mini narratives/biographies, entitled 'De True Story of....' These charater sketched make the collection feel more like a communal voicing. Indeed, as with his novel, it is Miller's skilful and varied use of lyric address, trough the second person voice, that draws the reader into this community, to witness- most obviously with poems such as 'Until you too have journeyed', the elegantly moving 'A Parting Song' and 'Brochure
, with its final invitation 'Please, when you visit Jamaica, drive/on the Singerman's roads'. It is the colours and tones that Miller discovers and invents in song here that makes this such a joyful, dark and ambitious collection.