Wilmer Mills
Wilmer Mills 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 Penguin/Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poets, 2004 and in The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, 2009. 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.
Mills 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. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was the Kenan Visiting Writer, 2008-2010, and at Covenant College in Chattanooga, where he was the writer-in-residence in the spring of 2011. He died after a very short battle with liver cancer in the summer of 2011.
Wil’s Ten Things (c/o Kathryn Mills)
- Lemon juice, honey, and olive oil
- Music and getting his head scratched
- Boots
- Wood
- Roots
- Quests and stars
- Portuguès
- The Gulf Coast
- Raising Arizona
- Jerry Clower