# Jim Wayne Miller

Jim Wayne Miller (October 21, 1936 – August 18, 1996) was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.

## Biography
### Early years

Jim Wayne Miller was born on October 21, 1936, in Leicester, North Carolina, to James Woodward Miller and Edith (Smith) Miller. He was raised with five brothers and sisters on a seventy-acre farm in North Turkey Creek, in Buncombe County, about fifteen miles west of Asheville. His father was a service manager at a Firestone Complete Auto Care in Asheville.

### Education and career

Jim Wayne Miller graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in English. He had studied abroad in Minden, Westphalia, Germany, the summer before his junior year on a homestay scholarship awarded by the Experiment in International Living. Upon graduation, he found work as a teacher of German and English in Fort Knox, Kentucky. In 1960 Miller received an NDEA Fellowship, making it possible for him to pursue graduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned his Ph.D. in German literature there in 1965, completing a dissertation on the German poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. From 1960 to 1963, he published regularly in Vanderbilt's literary magazine, Vagabond. By 1963, he had already joined the faculty at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, sixty miles north of Nashville. While at Vanderbilt he studied under Fugitive poet Donald Davidson and Hawthorne scholar Randall Stewart. He was a professor of German language and literature at Western Kentucky University for 33 years, in the faculty of the Department of Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies. He served as consultant to Appalachian studies programs in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio and was Visiting Professor in Appalachian Studies at the Berea College Appalachian Center.
Miller was promoted to associate professor of German at Western Kentucky University in 1966 and to full professor in 1970. In 1969 Sigma Tau Delta honored him for excellence in teaching, and in 1976 Western Kentucky University presented him with the University Faculty Award for scholarship and creativity. Berea College awarded him with the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature in 1981.
While on sabbatical in Germany in 1972, Miller met Austrian poet Emil Lerperger. Miller would later translate a volume of his poetry and also become his literary executor.
In 1977, Miller began his affiliation with the Poet-in-the-Schools Program in Virginia Public Schools. The following year, he began his long association with the Hindman Settlement School Appalachian Writers' Workshop. In 2015, following the publication of A Jim Wayne Miller Reader, the Appalachian Writers' Workshop honored the memory of Jim Wayne Miller by highlighting his work through lectures and book promotions. In his brief biography of Jim Wayne Miller for Appalachian Heritage, George Brosi writes that Miller "is quite simply an icon in the field of Appalachian Literature—one of its earliest and most ardent supporters." Among his many projects for the advancement of Appalachian literature was his editing of ten books by Jesse Stuart for re-issue by the Jesse Stuart Foundation.
Miller was elected chair of the Appalachian Studies Association in 1982. The same year, he received the Western Kentucky University Award for public service. For two years, beginning in 1984, he was visiting professor at the James R. Stokely Institute for Liberal Arts Education at the University of Tennessee. He also served as poet-in-residence at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

### Personal life

Miller married Mary Ellen Yates (1935–2018), a classmate at Berea College, on August 17, 1958. After graduation, they moved to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where Miller taught English and German at a school on the military base. In 1960, they moved to Nashville, Tennessee. They settled in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where they raised three children. Mary Ellen pursued graduate work at the University of Kentucky, where she earned a master's degree in English, then Ph.D. work at Vanderbilt University. Eventually, she also landed a tenure-track job at Western Kentucky University, in the Department of English, where she taught for more than 50 years. Mary Ellen Miller (1935–2018) is the author of a book of poems, The Poet's Wife Speaks (2011). Jim Wayne Miller was diagnosed with lung cancer in June 1996. He died at home on August 18.

## Writing

Miller is best known as a poet. In his work, he is centrally concerned with the preservation of the Appalachian cultural heritage in the modern world. His writing reflects his own experiences in the mountain South. He invents the figure of the Brier as an Appalachian Everyman, a voice for those voiceless people who are struggling to maintain their connection to a meaningful past. As Joyce Dyer writes, "In his poetry he explores the meaning of his own Appalachian experience, but always places it within a broader regional and national consciousness." Miller wrote satirical essays, articles about Appalachian history and culture, translations, reviews, editions of work by Jesse Stuart, anthologies, and fiction. In his satire, Miller attacks destructive social forces such as American consumerism. He also strives to show that the American South is a diverse place—and specifically that the mountain South is distinct from the lowland South. Miller made the following observation about his aim as a poet, according to Annette Hadley and Matthew Farrell of The Southern Highlands Research Center: "Growing up in North Carolina, I was often amused, along with other natives, at tourists who fished the trout streams. The pools, so perfectly clear, had a deceptive depth. Fishermen unacquainted with them were forever stepping into what they thought was knee-deep water and going in up to their waists or even their armpits, sometimes being floated right off their feet. I try to make poems like those pools, so simple and clear their depth is deceiving. I want the writing to be so transparent that the reader forgets he is reading and is aware only that he is having an experience. He is suddenly plunged deeper than he expected and comes up shivering."
Poet Robert Morgan praised Miller's first book of poetry, Copperhead Cane (1964), in these terms: "These poems shine as brightly as if they were written this morning. They do not reflect the fashions of 1965, but have a timeless, crafted quality. They have the authority of form and the authority of felt experience. They are authentic in detail and natural in speech."
Miller was one of the editors of Appalachia Inside Out, a two-volume anthology of Appalachian literature that demonstrates the richness of the culture and imaginative worlds of writers from the mountain South.
He received several awards for his novel Newfound (1989), including the Best Book of the Year citation from Learning Magazine and Best Book of the Year from Booklist.

## Documentary film

In 1985 Western Kentucky University produced a thirty-minute documentary film on the life and poetry of Jim Wayne Miller. Called "I Have a Place: The Poetry of Jim Wayne Miller." It is directed by Michael Lasater, a new media artist now on the Arts faculty at Indiana University South Bend. The film won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was broadcast on PBS stations.