Joseph Millar is an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. He was raised in

western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

and after an adult life spent mostly in the

SF Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gover ...

and the

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

, he divides his time between

Raleigh, NC Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southea ...

and

Richmond, CA Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council.

Life

Millar received a BA degree from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1967 and an MA degree from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

in 1970. He has worked as a telephone installation foreman and commercial fisherman and in 1997 gave up this blue collar life to try his hand at teaching. He has poems about fatherhood, labor, relationships and the life of the American man in the 20th Century. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including ''

The Alaska Quarterly Review ''The Alaska Quarterly Review'' is a biannual literary journal founded in 1980 by Ronald Spatz and James Liszka at the University of Alaska Anchorage and continued unaffiliated in 2020.July 1, 2020 University of Alaska Anchorage ended its financi ...

'', "DoubleTake," ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Boston. ...

'', ''Poetry International'', and ''

Prairie Schooner ''Prairie Schooner'' is a literary magazine published quarterly at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with the cooperation of UNL's English Department and the University of Nebraska Press. It is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and was first publish ...

, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, New Letters
Raleigh Review
and Shenandoah''. He has taught at

Mount Hood Community College Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) is a public community college in Gresham, Oregon, United States, named after Mount Hood. Opened in 1966, MHCC enrolls around 30,000 students each year and offers classes at the main campus in Gresham, as well as ...

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...

. He now teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at

Pacific University Pacific University is a private university in Forest Grove, Oregon. Founded in 1849 as the Tualatin Academy, the original Forest Grove campus is west of Portland. The university maintains three other campuses in Eugene, Hillsboro, and Wood ...

and the

Esalen Institute The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanistic alternative education. The institute played a key role in the Human Potential ...

. He is married to poet

Dorianne Laux Dorianne Laux (born January 10, 1952 in Augusta, Maine) is an American poet. Biography Laux worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, and a maid before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988. Laux taught at the Universi ...

; they divide their time between

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...

and

Richmond, CA Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council.

Awards

In 2002, Millar was awarded a Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2008 his work won a Pushcart Prize. He has also been the recipient of grants from the Montalvo Center for the Arts and from Oregon Literary Arts. In 2012, he was selected as a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

Works

* ''Overtime: Poems'', Eastern Washington University Press, 2001, , a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, *''Fortune'', Eastern Washington University Press, 2007, , *''Blue Rust,'' Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012, . * ''Kingdom'', Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017, ;chapbooks *"Slow Dancer", Cherry Valley Editions, 1992, *"Nightbound", Idaho Review Press, 2009 *"Bestiary," from Red Dragonfly Press, 2010.

References

External links

Pacific University MFA FacultyJOSEPH MILLAR
Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Poets from Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni American male poets Oregon State University faculty Pacific University faculty Writers from Eugene, Oregon University of Oregon faculty Mt. Hood Community College 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American poets 21st-century American male writers {{Oregon-bio-stub