Mikel Weisser biography

mikel weisser is a husband, father, teacher, artist, writer and perpetual student and at age 45, will still not capitalize his own name. A native Texan (explaining his oversize personality), weisser lived in Springfield, Ill. (home of such famous poets as Vachel Lindsay and John Knoepfle) for 15 years and turned a life long obsession with writing into an actual starving artist career: self publishing 4 books in 4 years, editing the local college journal, presenting 4 literary criticism papers at national conferences and careening through a 6 year stint as a political satirist for the underground zine scene before finally earning some cash and reputation as a freelancer for the Springfield arts and entertainment weekly Illinois Times.

Along the way he won the 1993 and 2000 Poets and Writers Literary Forum SlamJams (the only two he entered), earned a Master of Arts from the University of Illinois at Springfield and did most every kind of job from plumber to carnie to health food co-op manager to homeless shelter administrator just to keep his family fed. In 2001 weisser moved to Bullhead City as an 8th grade social studies teacher, a position he absolutely loves, but this year, 2004, weisser also became the poetry instructor for the Bullhead campus of Mohave Community College, released two more poetry collections, a simple calendar and Verb*I*Age, and returned to his writer-y roots with a vengeance as a political columnist and freelance journalist. Now, to raise interest in poetry in Bullhead City, weisser has founded the Live Poets Society West, a non-profit non-organization dedicated to preserving the works of earlier poets and promoting new writers. Currently a grad student with NAU and mikel should earn an M Ed in secondary social studies/writing instruction this fall, but he is going to take till spring just to be perverse. Some of his poetry can be found in the poetry pages of his Web site.