On November 2 and 3, 2010, the poet Wilmer Mills will make two public appearances—a reading and a lecture—at Hillsdale College.

Wilmer Mills is currently a carpenter in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Until last May, he taught poetry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as its Kenan Visiting Writer. He will be the Nick Barker Writer-in-Residence at Covenant College for 2011.

His first book of poems, a chapbook, Right as Rain, was published by Aralia Press in 1999. His first full-length collection of poems, Light for the Orphans, was published by Story Line Press in 2002.

He has published poems in The New Republic, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, The New Criterion, Shenandoah, Literary Imagination, and others. His poems have been anthologized in the Penguin/Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poets (2004), in The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (2009), and are forthcoming in an anthology of six American poets to be published by Anvil Poetry Press in the UK.

Mills has worked as a carpenter, furniture maker, sawmill operator, artisan bread baker, white oak basket weaver, farmer, white water raft guide, and poetry teacher among other things.

During his visit, Mr. Mills will give two public presentations. In the first of these events, on Tuesday, November 2, at 8:00 p.m., he will read from his work. On the following evening, November 3, at 8:00 p.m., he will deliver a talk titled “Mimesis Immemorial: How Verse Remembers Us.” Both events are free and open to the public, and will be held in Phillips Auditorium on the Hillsdale College campus. For more information, please call Dr. John Somerville at (517) 607-2431.