On Tuesday November 14 the poet Anne Pierson Wiese and I will appear at the Barnes & Noble at 194 Atlantic Avenue. Music will begin at 6:30, with a reading to follow.
For more information on the live event, follow this link:
Author Anne Pierson Wiese presents Which Way Was North with DJ set by Ben Miller
To hear an archival recording of Anne in action, click below:
July 27-28 the poet Anne Pierson Wiese and I will be participating in a series of public events sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center, including a noon discussion about the importance of writing at the Rock Island Public Library.
Last week my collaborator Dale Williams and I were on the campus of Cornell College (Mount Vernon, Iowa) doing what we do. Dale flew in from Brooklyn for the event.
On April 24 I visited Professor Katy Stavreva’s ENG 322 Shakespeare’s Rivals class, participating in a discussion of the literature of exile, and working with students to devise a strategy of publically presenting sections of Marlowe’s play of exile Edward II in conjunction with lines from my recently completed novel of exile What Days Are Like When There Are Only Nights.
On April 25 Dale and I discussed the topic of artistic collaboration with Professor Sandra Dyas’s ART 307 Advanced Photography class. Later that day, at the school’s Center for the Literary Arts, we presented sections of the first three completed phases of Cage Dies Bird Flies, preceded by a performance by ENG 322 students.
Below is a link to a video of the performance:
Cage Dies Bird Flies is a multi-phase collaboration. Each phase consists of 81 artworks inspired by my texts. These works, in turn, form the basis of books, exhibitions, recordings, performances. The plan is to execute ten phases.
Illuminations by the Slice, Phase I, was created between 2012-2014
Giant Miniature Illuminations, Phase II, was created between 2014-2016
The Luminous Dark: Landscapes Found and Lost, phase III, was created between 2017-2019
Before it snowed, Dale and I, along with poet Anne Pierson Wiese, visited Stone City, Iowa, the site of Grant Wood’s art colony in the 1930s. Below is an image of the three us standing in front of the Stone City General Store.
I am thrilled to announce that Anne Pierson Wiese, my partner of many years, has been chosen to receive the prestigious Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship.
Anne’s previous honors include the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize.
The Traveling Scholarship, established by the poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925), supports adventures abroad for gifted American-born poets.
Previous winners include Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Rexroth, Galway Kinnell, Henri Cole and Mary Jo Salter.
To learn more, follow the link below:
On May 29, Radcliffe Day, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the Radcliffe Medal, presented annually to “an individual who has had a transformative impact on society.” Before Justice Ginsburg delivered a speech about her historic career, lunch was served (salmon! again!) under a tent in Radcliffe Yard. On my right is poet Anne Pierson Wiese, and to my left is novelist V.V. Ganeshananthan.
Envision the first sentence of a Virginia Woolf novel (Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.) pasted, black letter by black letter, on the exterior of a Chinese lantern bigger than a basketball by an event organizer of exquisite standards, she who never leaves a stone of grammar unturned—the lantern LED-equipped: switch on bottom, an illuminated orb cradled by an incorrigible colorist in a cardinal jacket emerging from the deep of the 145th St. subway station accompanied by a willowy dance partner or poetess in the pink dress, the boozing late night regular on St. Nicholas Ave. commenting: “What you got, a moon?” and drizzle marinating the panther prowl of building shadows, tires slurring across damp pavement, the exclamation points of our emphatically bleary yet still dazzled eyes turning up 148th Street, led homeward by inherited incandescence of Tradition and its Future, just one lantern of many bearing famous first sentences that were hung about the auditorium, but at this moment this silvery blue glow seems to contain the extravaganza entire, all crafted decorations, the whole dance floor and its cornucopia of whirling faces celebrating writing, one true newness we can grant ourselves daily.
For more Ball images visit: http://www.one-story.com/blog/?p=4590
Ben Miller, author 