E. Ethelbert Miller

E. Ethelbert Miller
at the 2013 Fall for the Book
Born	Eugene Ethelbert Miller (1950-11-20) November 20, 1950 Bronx, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Professor, poet, literary activist
Language	English
Alma mater	Howard University
Genre	Poetry; memoir
Website
eethelbertmiller.com/main.html

Eugene Ethelbert Miller (born November 20, 1950) is an African-American poet, teacher and literary activist, based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and the host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin.

Life and career

Miller was born in the Bronx, New York. He received his B.A. from Howard University. He is the author of 13 books of poetry, two memoirs and is the editor of three poetry anthologies. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poet Lore, and Sojourners.

Miller was the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, one of the oldest literary series in the Washington area. He was director of Howard University's African-American Resource Center from 1974 for more than 40 years. Miller has taught at various schools, including American University, Emory & Henry College, George Mason University, Harpeth Hall School and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was also a core faculty member of the writing seminars at Bennington College. He worked with Operation Homecoming for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

A sign on the north entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro station in Washington, D.C. An excerpt from "The Wound-Dresser", by Walt Whitman, is inscribed into the granite wall around the entrance escalators. An excerpt from "We Embrace", by E. Ethelbert Miller, is inscribed into the sidewalk surrounding a nearby circular bench.

He currently serves as board chairperson of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is also on the boards of Split This Rock and the Writer's Center, and since 2002 has been co-editor of Poet Lore magazine, the oldest poetry journal in the US. He is former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C., and has served on the boards of the AWP, the Edmund Burke School, PEN American Center, PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and the Washington Area Lawyer for the Arts (WALA). He hosts a weekly morning radio show on WPFW called On the Margin.

In 1979, Marion Barry, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., where Miller lives, proclaimed September 28, 1979, as "E. Ethelbert Miller Day." Subsequently, on May 21, 2001, an "E. Ethelbert Miller Day" was also proclaimed by the Mayor of Jackson, Tennessee.

Miller's papers are held at Emory & Henry College and The George Washington University.

Awards and honors

• 1979: September 28 proclaimed as "E. Ethelbert Miller Day" by the Mayor of Washington, D.C.
• 1982: Mayor's Art Award for Literature
• 1988: Received the Public Humanities Award from the D.C. Humanities Council
• 1993: Columbia Merit Award
• 1994: Made an Honorary Citizen of the city of Baltimore on July 17 by the Mayor of Baltimore
• 1994: PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award (for In Search of Color Everywhere)
• 1995: O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize
• 1996: Honorary doctorate of literature awarded on May 18 by Emory & Henry College
• 1997: Stephen Henderson Poetry Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society
• 2001: May 21 declared as "E. Ethelbert Miller Day" by the Mayor of Jackson, Tennessee
• 2003: Fathering Words selected by DC WE READ for the one book, one city program sponsored by the D.C. Public Libraries
• 2003: Honored by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House
• 2004: Fulbright Scholarship recipient
• 2015: Inducted into the Washington, DC Hall of Fame
• 2016: AWP George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and the DC Mayor's Arts Award for Distinguished Honor
• 2018: Inducted into Gamma Xi Phi, a fraternity for artists

Bibliography

Poetry

• "The Land of Smiles and the Land of No Smiles: A Poem." 1974.
• Andromeda. Chiva Publications. 1974.
• The Migrant Worker. Washington Writers' Publishing House. 1978. ISBN 978-0-931846-07-6.
• Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain: Poems 1975-1980. Lotus Press. 1982. ISBN 978-0-916418-35-9.
• Where Are the Love Poems for Dictators?. Open Hand Publishing. 1986. ISBN 978-0-940880-65-8.
• The Fire This Time: 1992 and Beyond Los Angeles (Heaven Chapbook series), White Fields Press, 1993.
• First Light: New and Selected Poems. Black Classic Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0-933121-81-2.
• Whispers, Secrets, and Promises. Black Classic Press. 1998. ISBN 978-1-57478-011-6.
• Buddha Weeping in Winter. Red Dragonfly Press. 2001. ISBN 978-1-890193-25-6.
• How We Sleep On the Nights We Don't Make Love. Curbstone Press. 2004. ISBN 978-1-931896-04-7.
• "The 10 Race Koans as presented to Charles Johnson on the Morning of July 13, 2008; Shonda in England; Thomas Jefferson said he saw you in Paris". DC Poets. October 31, 2008.
• "The Hooker Never Votes; Water Song; 2 Shorts and a Smoke". Delaware Poetry Review.
• On Saturdays, I Santana With You. Curbstone Press. 2009. ISBN 978-1-931896-50-4.
• The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller (ed. Kirsten Porter), Willow Books, 2016. ISBN 978-0996139021
• If God Invented Baseball: Poems, Simon and Schuster, 2018. ISBN 9781947951006
• When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories, Simon and Schuster, 2021. ISBN 9781947951365

Anthologies

• Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century. Black Classic Press. 2002. ISBN 978-1-57478-017-8.
• E. Ethelbert Miller, Terrance Cummings, ed. (1994). In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry. Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 978-1-55670-339-3.
• Women Surviving Massacres and Men. Anemone Press. 1977.
• Ahmos Zu-Bolton II; E. Ethelbert Miller, eds. (1975). Synergy, an Anthology of Washington D. C. Black Poetry. Energy Blacksouth Press.
• Arnold Rampersad; Hilary Herbold, eds. (2006). "She Is Flat On Her Back". The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512563-4.
• Jonathan Andersen, ed. (2008). Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other U. S. A. Smokestack Books. ISBN 978-0955402821

Memoirs

• The 5th Inning. Busboys and Poets Press. 2009. ISBN 978-1-60486-062-7.
• Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer. St. Martin's Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-312-27013-1.

External links

• "Living the Legacy" Archived February 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine – official website
• American Academy of Poets page
• Two Poems by Miller at Beltway Poetry Quarterly
• Audio interview with Grace Cavalieri
• "E. Ethelbert Miller", reverbiage, NPR
• "Poetry by E. Ethelbert Miller" Archived September 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, On Being
• "E. Ethelbert Miller, Featured Writer", Writing For Peace, February 2020.
• "Talking With Poets: E. Ethelbert Miller, The Poet of Baseball and of Life". Interview with Indran Amirthanayagam. The Poetry Channel, July 12, 2021.
• E. Ethelbert Miller Receives 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award, at HowardZinn.org.