Ruth Miller was a South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n poet. Born in 1919 in Uitenhage

Uitenhage

Uitenhage is a South African town with 275,185 inhabitants in the Eastern Cape Province. It is well known for the Volkswagen factory located there, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent. The town's name is pronounced by English speakers and in Afrikaans...

 she grew up in the northern Transvaal and spent her adult life in Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

. She worked as a school secretary and later English teacher. She died of cancer in 1969.

She wrote short stories and plays, but is best known for her poems, which were frequently anthologised. She won the Ingrid Jonker Prize

Ingrid Jonker Prize

The Ingrid Jonker Prize is a literary prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry. It was instituted in honour of Ingrid Jonker after her death in 1965....

 for her first volume of poems, Floating Islands (1965). A second collection Selected Poems appeared in 1968. After her death a selection of her published and unpublished work Poems, Prose, Plays appeared, edited by Lionel Abrahams

Lionel Abrahams

Lionel Abrahams was a South African novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher. He was born in Johannesburg, where he lived his entire life...

.