CORE by Denise Miller (2015)

Emerging Poets & Writers Series

ISBN 978-0-9961390-5-2

$16.95

CORE TEXT360 revised

Interview with Abdur Rashada, Saginaw foundry worker:

abdur_rashada_interview_for_web

Poetry collection based on the true stories of African American sharecroppers of the Great Migration who journeyed North in search of the American Dream only to find hardships of a different kind. The poems chronicle the odyssey from a Mississippi plantation to an Ohio Valley coal mine to an iron foundry in Saginaw, Michigan.

Denise Miller is a Kalamazoo Valley Community College instructor, artist, poet, and community activist. She received a BFA from Bowling Green State University in Creative Writing in 1992 and an MA from Central Michigan University in 1995. A 2015 Hedgebrook Fellow, her work has also been funded by an Emerging Artists Grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo and the Gilmore Foundation. Miller is co-founder of Fire, (www.thisisfire.com), an arts and culture nonprofit in Kalamazoo that has as its mission to encourage and respond to people’s desire for authentic expression. There, Miller started Creative Justice Press where she and a team of high school and college interns have edited and published a national poetry anthology and the chapbook winner from the press’ first international chapbook competition. Miller is also executive chef and owner of fuel vegetarian restaurant in Kalamazoo. Fire reflects Miller’s belief that social and cultural awareness generate and sustain social justice.

Core is Miller’s full length poetry collection. Other publications include poems in Dunes Review; Michigan Writers Corner; Terror and Transformation Anthology, Wising Up Press; Just Like A Girl Anthology, GirlChild Press; African American Review; american ghost: poets on life after industry from Stockport Flats Press; and BLACKBERRY: a magazine. For more information:www.makedo.weebly.com