Mimi German is a poet and subversive artist dividing her time between living in the wilderness of Oregon’s Steens Mt. and the urban strife of Portland, OR. Her first book of poetry, Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars, was released in 2022 weaving her experiences as an advocate for unhoused Portlanders through poetry.
Born a wanderer, Mimi left Philadelphia for NY in ‘82 for college. It was in NYC during the Reagan Administration that her first of a few non-violent disobedient arrests occurred. After college she joined the peace movement, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), in Israel arriving just before the first Palestinian uprising. After returning to the US, Mimi split time between Cambridge, MA and Halifax, Nova Scotia eaking together money through nude modeling and as a musician busking on the streets of Halifax and Cambridge.
In 1995, Mimi hit the road to head west to Oregon where she still resides. In 1997, Mimi was arrested again, this time on Shoshone land in Nevada with the late Chief Corbin Harney protesting against a proposed uranium dumpsite.
In 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear fiasco, Mimi started an international group called RadCast which documented citizen radiation readings post-Fukushima, from around the globe. She was often asked to speak about the reality of radioactive toxicity around the globe on national and international talk shows. She was a frequent guest on Michael J. Ruppert’s show, The Lifeboat Hour, and had a special weekly spot for radiation readings on the Thom Hartman Program as well as daily radiation readings on KBOO radio news. After many years, it was evident that we as a society would never be rid of nuclear power, so Mimi chose to act locally instead by doing direct support for unhoused people in Portland, OR. She is still doing that work today.
As an advocate for unhoused people in Portland, Mimi has spent years regularly testifying or shutting down Portland City Council meetings in order to bring attention to the needs of the most disenfranchised group of people who were dying in droves on the streets from neglect, inclement weather, mental illness, and addiction. Mimi is co-teaching an ongoing poetry workshop with unhoused poets at the offices of Street Roots, a newspaper written by and created for the Portland unhoused community.
In 2020, Mimi, along with her partner, purchased land in Southeastern Oregon in the foothills of Steens Mountain Wilderness and the Pueblo Mt Range. It was here that she completed her manuscript for Where Grasses Bend, Mimi’s second book of poetry that began at the start of the pandemic through 2023. These poems are about longing, loss, humanity, and the regeneration of Love as it presents itself to Mimi in the wilderness of Oregon. In the summer of 2021, Mimi and her partner adopted Claude, a blue dog who is featured on the cover of Mimi’s new book.
It was also in her high desert home that she discovered Ursula Le Guin’s book, Out Here: Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country, a book she keeps on display for visitors. Mimi had met Le Guin numerous times at the food co-op in which they were both members in Portland. Le Guin’s spirit lives on in these canyons as one of the many ghost voices whom you can hear in the songs of the star dance.
Mimi’s poetry has been published in the New Generation Beats Anthology 2022 and in the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s, Remembering Jack Kerouac On His 100th Birthday. Her poems have also been published in the UK in International Times (IT), Steel JackDaw Magazine, and in the US, Sublunary Review, The Hopper Magazine, The Mantle, Three Line Poetry (Vols. 51/52), New Verse News and was a finalist in The Poetry Box and The Hopper for best chapbook manuscript. Her poems can also be found in the testimony files of Portland City Council sessions between 2017-2020.
Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars is available from the publisher The Poetry Box and independent bookstores nationally and internationally. ISBN-10: 1956285008