Poet Jane Miller reads for Writing Program Feb. 4

Author of 'A Palace of Pearls' and 'Memory at These Speeds'

The Boston Book Review once compared Jane Miller’s careening, associative verse to the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns: inventive, energetic and risky.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, the celebrated poet will read from her work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences’ spring Reading Series.

The event is free and open to the public and takes place in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge, located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

For more information, call (314) 935-7130 or e-mail David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.

Miller is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including “A Palace of Pearls” (2005), a book-length meditation on home, love, war and the responsibility of the poet. Divided into 33 chapters, the book was inspired by the spectacular Moorish kingdom of Al-Andalus, which fell during the Spanish inquisition, but also weaves together contemporary concerns with Greek, Roman and Judaic mythologies.

“Reading Jane Miller’s poetry is like channel-surfing on acid,” wrote critic Terri Sutton in the LA Weekly. “Her deliberately interrupted narrative warps and weaves and makes the familiar strange and the strange recognizable as something you might have put away in a shoebox.”

Miller’s previous volumes include “Many Junipers” (1980), the National Poetry Series selection “The Greater Leisures” (1983), “American Odalisque” (1987), “August Zero” (1993), “Memory at These Speeds: New and Selected Poems” (1996) and “Wherever You Lay Your Head” (1999).

Miller also is the author of “Working Time: Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel” (1992). Her collaborative projects include “Black Holes, Black Stockings” (1985), a prose/poetry collection with the poet Olga Broumas; and “Midnights” (2008), in which Miller’s writings are paired with the chalk and oil drawings by the artist Beverly Pepper.

Miller has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Goddard College and the University of Arizona, where she directed the Creative Writing Program from 1999-2003. Her many honors include a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, a Western States Book Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Calendar Summary

WHO: Poet Jane Miller

WHAT: Reading from her work

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4

WHERE: Hurst Lounge, Room 201 Duncker Hall

COST: Free and open to the public

SPONSOR: Washington University’s Writing Program Reading Series

INFORMATION: (314) 935-7130 or dschuman@wustl.edu