Walkin' with Joaquin

Our Friends of Joaquin Miller Park annual meeting and "In the Hights" Literary Arts Festival last October was an epic revival of great traditions. There's a video coming, but until then, taste these delicious highlights. We shared a pot of crowdsourced “bandit stew” (everyone brought an ingredient) prepared by chef John Farais of Indigenous Edibles . The audience--which included all of the readers--was treated to a cascade of historic literature read by local lights! The first reading was by a Rachel Royce,  president of the  Metropolitan Horseman's Association . From atop her horse, Harry Potter, she read a rollicking excerpt of the poem "Joaquin Murietta" -- the poem that shaped Joaquin Miller's destiny. Miller's horse, by the way, was named  Chief. The purpose of the program was to entertain and educate the public about the first and second wave of  California Writers who lived at or visited The Hights, Joaquin Miller's art colony that later ...

Join us for an afternoon of conversation about the Poet of the Sierras, Joaquin Miller. This event will be hosted by Dale Risden and Patrick LoChiatto at their home near Joaquin MIller Park. Bring something sweet or savory to nibble or sip! We'll have a special musical guest this year... Amazingly, Espen Langbråten from Norway will be in town! When: May 31, 2026, 2pm-6pm Where: Dale and Patrick's, 3424 Crane Way, Oakland Rsvp here!

Please join the Ina Coolbrith Circle on Saturday, March 21, at 2:00 p.m. for our monthly meeting.  This month's topic is  INA COOLBRITH AND JOAQUIN MILLER by Kristen Caven California Writers Club in Residence  at Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland, CA Meeting hosted by Denise Barney Kristen  is currently working on a new book about Joaquin Miller, who was one of Ina Coolbrith’s most successful mentees. So much has been written about his surface level eccentricities and foibles that his depth of thought, uplifting themes and passion for artists—shared with his lifelong friend and parenting partner Ina Coolbrith—have gotten lost in the reflection. She’ll be reading the first chapter, Building the City Beautiful,  about his love for Ina, at our March meeting. Caven is a multi-genre literary artist whose poems, cartoons, plays, lyrics, essays, short stories, articles and choreography have been published in  Oakland Unseen, The Oakland Tribune, The Monthly,   Rud...

Imagine my delight when I got the most wonderful email the other week, out of the blue. The subject line was,  "Fellow Miller Enthusiast." Hi Kristen, I stumbled over your page completely by chance, and so glad I did. There are not many people any more who cherish and even know who Joaquin Miller was. This is probably a bit strange, but my name is Espen and I am a Norwegian singer-songwriter who have a project called Miller Sessions. We put music to some of Millers poems and I am travelling across Europe and playing them.  I have no other intentions than saying hi to a fellow Miller enthusiast. There are of course a lot of wierd and funny stories connected to why a Norwegian would take on such a project, but I will leave it here for the moment :-) If you are interested in hearing the music you find us on your favourite streaming platform as Miller Sessions. Any how, thanks for remembering him and spreading his stories. All the best Espen Langbråten Well of course, I immediate...

New green grasses were covering every open hill, and the wind blew colder up there than I had expected it to when I left the house on a January Wednesday. But at a picnic table in the lee of the parking lot, I was treated to a cup of coffee brewed by an intrepid biker and fellow history nerd.  Morgan Fletcher , who I met last year on a history walk, rides his bike like Joaquin Miller used to ride ranges. When he's resting and recovering, he searches old newspaper clippings and blogs about them on Fastest Slow Guy You Know . We've become good friends lately by dumping loads information into each other's email boxes, piecing together the stories of this spot on the hill. He unzips a bag that is shaped like, and suspended in, the triangle of space in his bike frame, and pulls out a small stove and a tiny coffee-making apparatus. He grinds the beans as he boils the water, and presses their fragrant spirit right into the Anchor Hocking cups I've brought in a tiny basket.  He...

I’m walkin’ with Joaquin this month in Italy, where he spent many months in the mid-1870s after establishing himself in London. As I ride trains from place to place, I’m reading his Complete Poetical Works , which he put together in The Hights in 1897, and pulling out tidbits and advice for writers. Miller not only collected his poems (the ones he would stand by, he wrote; the rest were reactions to his times, ruined by critics), he talks about them—about where he wrote them and what they meant to him. They’re beautiful. With the rhythm of the rails, I sound out the meter in my head, my fingers correcting the paragraph breaks where the archived text has clumped things wrong. Miller's writing is incredibly lyrical, and whatever reputation he had for gaining fame before he fully developed his craft, he certainly mastered it with the help of his masters, whom he sought in libraries and museums in his European travels. Robert Browning invited him to Venice, where Miller wrote some ...