WINSTON-SALEM – A poem by Joseph Mills, who teaches humanities and writing at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), has been published on American Life in Poetry, a nationally syndicated feature by former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  

The poem, “How You Know,” was released onto the website May 16. (See www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/321.html.)

Kooser, who was U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, wrote of Mills’ poem: “For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one … does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.”

American Life in Poetry, a project of the Poetry Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, provides newspapers and online publications with Kooser’s free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The New York Times is among its subscribers. To see Mills’ poem in the Times, see: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/poetry-pairing-may-19-2011/?scp=1&sq=American%20Life%20in%20Poetry&st=cse. 

Mills has taught in UNCSA’s Undergraduate Academic Program since 1998. He has published three volumes of poetry with Press 53: “Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers,” “Somewhere During the Spin Cycle,” and, most recently, “Love and Other Collisions.” “How You Know” is part of his latest book.

Mills earned a B.A. from the University of Chicago, an M.S. from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of California, Davis.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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Joe Mills