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Philip Terman
Poet Poetry Coach/Workshopping


My books of poetry are This Crazy Devotion (Broadstone Books, 2020), Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House, 2015), The Torah Garden (Autumn House, 2011), Rabbis of the Air (Autumn House, 2007), Book of the Unbroken Days (Mammoth books, 2005) and The House of Sages (Mammoth books, 1998).
Individual poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Sun Magazine, The Forward, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The New Promised Land: An Anthology of Jewish American Poetry and 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. Poems have appeared on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and Poetry Daily.
As well, in collaboration with the writer and translator Saleh Razzouk, we published a translation from the Arabic of the Syrian poet Riad Saleh Hussein's selected poems in a chapbook, The World That Becomes Bread and Grapes (Mid-American Review) and a full-length collection Tango Under a Narrow Ceiling (Bitter Oleander Press). Individual translations of Riad's poems have been published in several journals, including Poetry International, Crazy Horse, Poetry London, the Laurel Revciew, and Vox Populi.
Saleh Razzouk also translated a collection of my selected poems into Arabic, My Dear Friend Kafka, (Nimwa Press, Damascus, Syria 2015).
I've also collaborated on a book of poems with my sister-in-law, Susan Terman, who shared her mother's stories of her life in Poland, her experiences in the Holocaust, and her travels to and life in America, called I am a Jew: Stories of a Holocaust Survivor, to be published by Mammoth Books in 2023. In that collection, I shape Susan's (and a few of her relatives) stories from her mother into poems.
I 've also been fortunate to collaborate with other artists, including musicians, painters. I perform my poetry with the jazz pianist and composeer, Mark DeWalt. As well, several of my poems have been set to orchestra and the song cycles: The Gatherer of Lost Children, The Four Seasons, and The Silence Flowering Its Birdsong, by the composer Brent Register.
In collaboration with the painter James Stewart and bookbinder, Susan Frankes, we have produced two handsewn books: Like a Bird Entering a Window and Leaving Another Window (2015) and The Four Seasons (2017).
Recipient of the Kenneth Patchen Award, the Sow’s Ear Chapbook Prize, and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poetry on the Jewish Experience, I am a retired professor creative writing and literature from PennWest: Clarion University, where I directed The Spoken Arts Reading Series and advised the literary journal, Tobeco.
With the writer George Looney, I co-founded and served as the Director of Poetry of the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival from 2003-2017.
In 2010, I began The Bridge Literary and Arts Center in Franklin, PA, which sponsors workshops, events, and The
Bridge Literary Arts Journal.
www.bridgeliteraryartscenter.com
Currently, I co-direct, with the poet Baruch November, the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center at Buffalo and co-direct the Sarasota Poetrylife Festival, featuring poets Patricia Jabeh Wesley and Martín Espada March 11-13 2023.

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