Where Grasses Bend

Mimi German is a poet and subversive artist dividing her time between life 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 eking 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 disaster, 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 Thom Hartman's show. After many years after it was clear that we as a society would never be rid of nuclear power, Mimi chose to act locally instead by doing direct support for unhoused people in Portland, OR. She is still doing that work today. Mimi is co-teaching an ongoing poetry workshop with unhoused poets at the offices of Street Roots, a newspaper written by the Portland unhoused community. Where Grasses Bend is Mimi's second book of poetry that was written from the start of the pandemic through today. The poems are about loss, longing, humanity, and the regeneration of Love as it presents itself in the wilderness of Oregon. 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. Beat Poet Laureate for the State of Oregon