Tender Noted

by Shala Miller

Tender Noted is a meditation on the intersection of desire, mourning, and listening to one’s skin while coming to understand the practice of love. This interdisciplinary work brings together images from Miller’s filmic and photographic practice, informed by and given voice to by Miller’s writing. The book’s organizing principle is the echo: between text and image and between bodies and the stages, rooms, and affects they inhabit.

Taking up skin as a site of history and intimacy with the self and across generations, Miller holds space both for the body’s vulnerabilities and its maladies. Moving between poems and lists, diaristic writing, and plays, which feature characters such as Mrs. Lovely, Miller asks what types of speech, postures, and practices define the self within the entanglement of relation. Tender Noted is a study on love in its everyday pain and pleasure.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2022

Reviews

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shala Miller’s book unfolds a cinematic masterpiece.. this is poetry, this is.. it..,
juxtaposing
, juxtaposing
, juxtaposing,
i’m left in awe

~ tender noted touches on the unutterable future, the passages of black life.. here we are, and there we go..

[Rocky · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Dear Father, what has my father said of my trembles/ and indulgence?/ I am searching for this so-called medicine/ that I must find within/ Dear God, what is it about me that must feed/ the hunger elsewhere?”