A.D. Miller, Poet and Memoirist

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A. D. Miller is pleased to announce the publication of his most recent book, Fall Rising: Exile to Odyssey.

You can purchase his book by clicking this link

"The great James Baldwin would have loved this book...Miller focuses with intimacy on soulful landscape: how in the1940s a South Carolina outcast ended up in California and in an “intellectual” Berkeley as functionally racist as the
rest of the U.S. From a living reading-writing-thinking American devoted to the arts and democratic ideals in recent history,how lucky we are to have such a profound story of survival."

—Al Young, California’s former Poet Laureate

Acrylic Portrait of AD by Jessica Phrogus of Berkeley, CA.

FEATURED POEM of the month:

Street Scenes 1988

Never dreamed back then

Would be so hard

To get a place to stay

To keep

I'm working

Every day

Had a place

Last week, that is

Said it was his house

Do what he wanted with it

So he raised our rent

Hard to keep the children clean

For school and that

They had an address once

But it was his house

_________

They said the institution

Was bad for us

After all, we weren't hurting

Nobody, not even ourselves

We belonged back in our communities

Well, here we are, smack

In our community

Rachael'll tell you

Where we slept last night

___________

"We wear barbed wire

In our underwear,"

Like Nina says

These fools talk about

"Let me in your sleeping bag,

Two can sleep warmer than one."

Know we can't call the cops

____________

There are some people

On these streets

What gets me's the mothers with babies

I saw a picture of one

Of those third world countries

By the bus station; New York like that

And Chicago, and San Francisco

Like that, and Washington, D.C.

____________

I'm nineteen

Always big for my age

Too big for school

What there was of it

Got a bed roll now

A little street hustle going

No dope, nothing like that

But cool

___________

pecking order

The winos used to hug

The park

Run like birds

When you flush them

They brave with us

Right of possession

_______________

broken record

To get help you

Have to have an address

Some place they

Can send it to

To get an address

You have to get help

To get help you have to

_______________

That fellow in the supermarket

Used to leave stuff out back

Bread, old fruit and like that

You could depend on him

Then he got transferred

_____________

They say the President, he

Said (I didn't hear him

Myself), he said he thought

Some of us liked it on the street

After all there is some of us didn't even go

To the shelters

Our President said that? Glad

I didn't hear him

Myself

___________

They safe from us

The politicians

You can't vote

With no address

__________

I don't want to look in your eyes

Don't want you

Looking in mine

But how else

Can I see you

Or you me?

Clearly Meant Poetry Series

AD Miller was the guest reader at the Clearly Meant poetry series at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Library on Saturday, June 15, 2019.

The event was packed with supporters and was a great success!

Click here to see a video of AD reading his poem called Garage Sale.

A. D.'s papers acquired by Stanford.

There was a celebration of that acquisition on April 2, 2017.

Pictures have been added from that event Please check them out by clicking here

Additionally, videos from the April 2, 2017 party and from prior times have been added. For those, click here.

AD at work with messy desk In October of 2016, the Stanford University Library Archive acquired A. D's papers, including journals, work product, and correspondence going back as early as the 1940's. The announcement of the acquisition can be found by going to this link.