Tag Archives: South Dakota

NEXT BOOK FORTHCOMING FROM RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Soon Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls 2020-2022 will be released by Raritan Skiff Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press.

https://raritanquarterly.rutgers.edu/raritan-imprint

One description of the project goes like this:

In 2015, Ben Miller and Anne Pierson Wiese, moved from NYC to

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to explore their midwestern roots and

to focus on writing projects. Working a day job in a hospital,

Miller had a front-row seat to the Covid-19 pandemic as it moved

from the coasts to the Upper Midwest. Spanning March 2020

to January 2022 and taking the form of documentary-style notes,

Pandemonium Logs casts an unflinching eye on the state of

the US healthcare system during a global pandemic, giving voice

to the doctors, nurses, patients, and families at the center of the

crisis and raising crucial questions about medical ethics, regional

divides, and the human cost of organizational malfunction.

ESSAY IN NEW ENGLAND REVIEW

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“The Sweet Science of Socks”—an extended meditation on the craft of marriage—appears in the Summer 2022 issue of New England Review.

To hear a reading of an excerpt of the essay tap the link below:

The Sweet Science of Socks

To learn more about the issue follow this link:

Summer 2022

To order the issue at a discount, follow this link:

https://newenglandreviewsubscriptions.submittable.com/submit/f6661081-c71d-430b-9f25-da8cb1de9bf6/friends-family-discount

ARTIST CAREER DEVELOPMENT GRANT RECEIVED

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This $5,000 award—jointly funded by the state of South Dakota and the National Endowment for the Arts—is “designed to support emerging artists committed to advancing their work and careers by providing funding to produce new work.”

SD Arts Council allocates $1.26 million in grants

These funds will importantly help alleviate financial pressure, allowing me to more quickly push various projects toward conclusion.

Deep gratitude goes out to the NEA, and, as well, the South Dakota Arts Council.

 

 

 

IOWA MURAL SPEAKS! EVENT

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CornellReallyBest

On April 20th at Cornell College students and faculty gathered to translate the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” (William Carlos Williams) into some of the many languages spoken in the urban Midwest, including German, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish. This effort is another in support of my on-going Mural Speaks! project born at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2014.

“CAGE DIES BIRD FLIES” EXCERPTS TO APPEAR IN SPRING 2017 ISSUE OF HAYDEN’S FERRY REVIEW

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A spread consisting of eight works from Phase One of “Cage Dies Bird Flies,” my on-going collaboration with painter Dale Williams, will appear in Issue #60 of the Hayden’s Ferry Review. To visit this print journal’s website, follow the link below:

http://haydensferryreview.com

LILACS IN WINTER

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WinterLilac1

In 2015 I received the gift of two baby lilacs–Syringa x hyacinthiflora ‘Betsy Ross’ (white) and Syringa vulgaris President Lincoln (blue)–from Arnold Arboretum propagator Jack Alexander. At the moment Betsy and Abe sleep swaddled in blue light and snow in our front yard in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

 

RADCLIFFE ALBUM: MURAL SPEAKS! IN HARVARD YARD

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On April 14th my stellar Research Partner Harvard Senior Ashford King and I spent an ebullient day on the Science Center Plaza promoting awareness of the diversity of the urban Midwest by offering the international Harvard populace the chance to step up to the “Translation Station” and convert the classic American poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” into some of the 140 languages spoken in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The morning began with me pushing a wheelbarrow borrowed from Cambridge Landscaping from Byerly Hall to the event site. Ashford is pictured here playing the guitar during a musical interlude. I am tapping the perfectly tuned buoy.

On April 14th my stellar research partner Harvard senior Ashford King and I spent an ebullient day on the Science Center Plaza promoting awareness of the diversity of the urban Midwest by offering the international Harvard populace the chance to step up to the “Translation Station” and convert the classic American poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” into the 140 languages spoken in Sioux Falls, SD.
The morning began with me pushing a wheelbarrow borrowed from Cambridge Landscaping to the event site.
Ashford is pictured here playing the guitar during a musical interlude. I am tapping the perfectly tuned buoy.

UPCOMING HARVARD APPEARANCES INVOLVING WHEELBARROWS AND LILACS

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On April 14th MURAL SPEAKS! rolls into Harvard Square:

https://www.facebook.com/muralspeaksharvard

On May 3rd I will be shaking the branches at Arnold Arboretum:

Follow that Fragrance! Chasing Lilac History

Ben Miller, Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Team Lilac

Location: Hunnewell Building

White lilacs and Rachmaninov are connected how? What villainous role did lilac blooms play on the old “Batman” TV show? Can you name the Walt Whitman lilac poem not addressing President Lincoln’s assassination? This year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, fellow Ben Miller and four Harvard College research partners (Theodore Delwiche ‘17, Sarah Blatt-Herold ‘18, Christine Legros ‘17, Ian Van Wye ‘17) have been harvesting material for a book-length lyric essay about the lilac aura, and ways it has filtered through their own lives and cultures around the globe. In this lively program, “Team Lilac” will present an array of poems, songs, monologues and visual art celebrating the lavish, mysterious, and ever-enduring charisma of Syringa vulgaris.