Endicott College: Kevin Carey and Rod Kessler to present a documentary on the late outsider poet Malcolm Miller

Melvin Miller

The event will be held October 5, 2017 at Endicott College as part of the Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series. 12:30PM. Open to the public.  The series is curated by Professor Doug Holder.  http://endicott.edu   http://visitingauthorseries.blogspot.com

Unburying Malcolm Miller

Filmmakers Carey and Hillringhouse bring the outsider poet Malcolm Miller back to life in this riveting documentary. Miller found early success with his poetry and a close friendship with McGill classmate Leonard Cohen, but later succumbed to mental illness and obscurity and living a life on the margins. In spite of his struggles, Miller left behind over three thousand poems. After his death in 2014, retired Salem State Professor and writer Rod Kessler who befriended Miller in the last year of his life, took it upon himself to sift through the body of Miller’s work and tell his story through a series of interviews with the people who knew him. The film also showcases Miller’s poems with readings by local poets in various locations across his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts.

Kevin and Rod will show an edited version of Unburying Malcolm Miller and will take questions about the making of the film.

KEVIN CAREY is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Salem State University. He has published three books – a chapbook of fiction, The Beach People from Red Bird Chapbooks (2014) and two books of poetry from Cavankerry Press, The One Fifteen to Penn Station (2012) and Jesus Was a Homeboy (2016) which was recently selected as an Honor Book for the 2017 Paterson Literary Prize. Two poems from this collection have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Kevin is also a documentary filmmaker. His latest project Unburying Malcolm Miller, produced with Mark Hillringhouse, premiered at the Mass Poetry Festival on May 5^th Kevincareywriter.com

ROD KESSLER's short story collection, Off in Zimbabwe, won the Annual Series Award of the Associated Writing Programs in 1984. His stories have been anthologized in The Literary Dog and Flash Fiction. He is a past director of the Eastern Writers' Conference at Salem State College (now University), where he edited The Sextant, the faculty magazine, and Soundings East, the literary magazine and was a longtime (1983-2014) professor of English and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. Since his retirement three years ago he has been concentrating on preserving the writing of Salem poet Malcolm Miller (1930-2014).