ezra miles the signalman

Ezra Miles’s debut poetry collection,The Signalman, delves into the solitude, ritual, and inner world of a railway signalman working in a rural box. Published in late 2023, these poems capture the tension between isolation and connection as Miles draws on his own experience as a signalman in the English countryside. Through vivid imagery like foxes, ghosts, and distant trains the collection explores memory, faith, grieving, and the search for meaning in repetitive, everyday work. It achieves emotional depth by balancing moments of quiet beauty with flashes of urgency and introspection.

About the Author and Setting

Ezra Miles: Poet and Worker

Born and raised in Hackney, East London, Ezra Miles brings his work as a railway signalman into a lyrical dialogue with the natural and mechanical world. Described as ‘a saint in hermitage’, Miles merges lived experience with spiritual reflection his background gives life to every creak of wood and passing train in these pages.

Life in a Signal Box

Miles writes vividly about his time spent working alone in a small cabin what he calls a rural signalbox. The setting becomes a crucible for thought and feeling: birdsong, farm machinery, cold metal, and the strange peace of remote responsibility.

Structure and Style

Themed Around Isolation and Reflection

The poems cohere around two powerful poles: isolation and dialogue. On one hand, there’s the loneliness of the job long shifts, silence, and unseen dangers. On the other, there is a spiritual conversation, sometimes directed toward God or nature, forming a kind of reckoning with life’s weight.

Language and Imagery

Using terse yet atmospheric language, Miles evokes rural landscapes, disused machinery, and a sense of haunting. Foxes, ghosts, and vivid weather patterns appear again and again. Billowing smoke, shifting light, and mechanical sounds function as metaphors for memory, grief, or spiritual hunger.

Themes and Motifs

Solitude and Responsibility

Miles shows how the signalman’s isolation comes with responsibility he controls trains’ movement and thus bears unseen civic duties. The solitude becomes a lens for exploring grief, history, and the interconnectedness of personal and communal life.

Memory and Loss

Across the collection, memory surfaces through quiet gestures: tuning bells, recalling past conversations, or hearing phantom trains. These moments anchor the poems, raising questions like, Who are we when we’re alone? and What remains when connections break?.

Faith, Nature, and the Everyday

Spirituality permeates the text not as overt religion but as a form of awe. Whether addressing God or the natural world, Miles imbues his observations with reverence. Birds, windswept trees, and distant machinery all reflect on spiritual and earthly cycles.

Poems That Stand Out

• Passing Ships– balances industrial imagery and natural metaphors, with lines like When someone looks / at you you exist again.
• Fox and Bell– touches on nightly vigilance and the echo of bells as symbols of warning and memory.
• Dialogue with God– combines earthy imagery with spiritual questions, blending self-confrontation and humility.

Reception and Critique

Critical Acclaim

Critics have praisedThe Signalmanfor its emotional resonance and structural coherence. Tom Branfoot from Eyewear Press noted its ‘poetic electricity’. Nicole Yurcaba in the Colorado Review commented on the weight of silence and its transformative effects.

Reader Response

The collection resonates particularly with readers seeking introspective, nature-infused poetry. It has garnered attention on literary platforms and among train enthusiasts, emerging as a thoughtful bridge between industrial labor and poetic inquiry.

Context in Contemporary Poetry

Working-Class and Place-Based Poetics

Miles’s poetry joins a growing body of work emphasizing working-class lives, labor, and rural-industrial settings. Like other contemporary poets who blend profession and personal reflection, Miles shows how everyday work can reveal universal truths.

Dialogue with Ecopoetry

By vividly depicting rural landscapes and ecological tension, the collection overlaps with ecopoetry. The environment is not merely backdrop but a character alive, changeable, and emotional.

The Signalmanstands out as a powerful, focused debut that explores isolation, duty, and spiritual reflection through the work of a railway signalman. Ezra Miles transforms ordinary haunts foxes, bells, signal boxes into symbols of grief, connection, and faith. The result is a quietly intense collection that speaks to both the specific world of railway labor and the universal longing for purpose and companionship in quiet places.