Zell Miller III has his own lexicon. As with many poets, grammatical forms and capitalization rules get warped when Miller’s words make their way onto the page. For his debut collection, Austin’s inaugural poet laureate further examined the way his influences and his experience as a performer shape his written words.
“It’s still so different for me because I’m a performer first,” the poet says. “It’s a very different experience. I come from a theatre world. I’m an interdisciplinary theatre artist.”
Miller’s thought-provoking, rhythmic slam performances brought the theatre artist’s work to audiences across the city, but working with editors on the pen-and-paper renditions of those poems, some nitty-gritty details had to be addressed.
“Verbally it sounds good to say: People want to know why Malcolm was looking out his window holding an AK,” Miller says. His early editor, Mike Whalen, though, pointed out a fact-checking error – “actually, it was an M1.”
“That part of it was – I don’t even want to say arduous, because Mike is such an open and amazing guy – it was just a little different.
“It felt good to then go back and question things,” says Miller, like whether the letter R he uses instead of the word “are” is capitalized in his personal style and how readers should perceive the slashes he uses to punctuate.
Austin’s Indigenous Offspring – so named because, Miller says, “I was raised here. I’ve seen this city” – bears the markings of one of the first plays the multidisciplinary writer bought, one that’s profoundly influenced him since: Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. “It opened me up to how your words could live on a page in a theatre form,” the poet says.
Many years later, Miller hopes his own blended form of performance and writing will spark inspirational moments in his readers that he can’t yet imagine.
“As a performer, especially a writer, that’s what you’re looking for,” Miller says. “You’re looking [to] give someone a different experience.”
Where They Read: Austin Public Library – Central Location, Sixth Floor
“I had no clue that there was a sixth floor of the Austin Central Library until I became the poet laureate and got a tour,” says Miller. The peaceful environment and city-meets-nature view has since made it his favorite spot.
What to Read Next
Embracing the performance of poetry, blended with noise music and experimental presentation, local writer Michael Perret’s audio chapbook Still Life Eating Beauty – recorded in collaboration with noise artist RM Davis – is a must-listen for boundary-pushing poetry lovers.
What the Austin Chronicle Staff Is Reading This Summer
Amanda Eyre Ward’s Latest Book Follows a Family’s Complicated Journey
Motherhood, Mystery, and Pole Dancing Combine in Last Night Was Killer
Journalist Lauren Hough Writes Her Own On the Road
Laekan Zea Kemp Is on the Tween Reading Beat
Summer Reading Roundup
This article appears in June 26 • 2026.
