Philip Terman

Workshopping

Poetry Coaching

Poet

NEW BOOKS!

“‘Generosity’ is the word that first comes to mind whenever I think of Philip Terman’s poetry.My Blossoming Everything may be his most magnanimous collection yet. a heart-true buoyancy many of us need right now, in music so lovely and so elemental it continues to sing even after you close these pages.”


—Ann Pancake, author of Strange as This Weather Has Been

http://annpancake.blogspot.com/


“I love the stuff of Philip Terman’s poetry:... Movingly, lovingly and often hilariously, Terman presents the America he and I grew up in... “


Jacqueline Osherow https://yetzirahpoets.org/bios/jacqueline-osherow/

Coming soon!

Photo by: Greg Clary

ABOUT

I’m the author of eight books and four chapbooks of poetry, including the recently published, My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Books) and the soon-to-be released The Whole Mishpocha: New and Selected Jewish Poems (Ben Yehuda Press).

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 Tango Under a Narrow Ceiling (Bitter Oleander Press) as well as translations from other Arabic poets, including the Palestinian poet Nasser Rabah.

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: A Holocaust Family Memoir, published by Mammoth Books in 2023.

I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with other artists, including ​musicians and painters.  On occasion, I perform my poetry ​with the jazz pianist and composer, Mark DeWalt. Several of ​my  poems have been set to orchestra and song cycles by the ​composer Brent Register: The Gatherer of Lost Children, The ​Four Seasons, and The Silence Flowering Its Birdsong. In ​collaboration with the painter James Stewart and bookbinder, ​Susan Frankes, we have produced two hand-sewn books: Like ​a Bird Entering a Window and Leaving Another Window (2015) ​and The Four Seasons (2017).

Books

“These are moving beautiful poems from the writer who knows how to live the days with his whole self, and how to put days into words.


--Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic.”


https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/this-crazy-devotionpoems-by-philip-terman

"This is a big-hearted, large-minded book, rich in its religioius heritage yet ​wonderfully ironic, in its particulars, about those same compelling cultural ​connections. The flow of the writing, too, is thoroughly complete and ​poignantly alive in its follow-through...Philip Terman's Our Portion is a work of ​profound maturity, practical wisdom, and reconciliaiton with what is possible." ​--Stanley Plumly


In Our Portion, Philip Terman charts the seasons of a life in the garden--a life ​rooted in Jewish tradition and animated by love. Expansive, generous, he ​celebrates and sings the beauty of Creation, the lovers in one another's arms, ​the birds at their song. Though he is mindful of the griefs of a fallen order, he ​keeps returning us to what redeems and nourishes, inviting us in poem after ​poem to marvel with him at 'the generous melody of the moment.'" -Chana ​Bloch ​

https://www.autumnhouse.org/books/our-portion-new-and-selected-poems-​philip-terman/


​ "These poems enact a rich dialogue between a wished-for simmplicity and purity of a religious perspective with the mess and frustration of history. Open to facts of the world, they manage to maintain a lyrical intensity. This is an impressive achievement."

--Carl Dennis


"Through his poetry, Terman is able to try on Judaism's mystical skin without actually having to wear it. But writing about it brings him close to its power," the reviewer wrote. "For him, like many others, Jewish consciousness takes the place of observance. It is the stubborn branch that refuses to leave its ancestral tree, easy as that might be in America." --The Jerusalem Post Review: City Paper pittsburgh


Terman is a fine cantor of the natural world...his strength is litany and Whitmanian expansiveness...most narrative poems involve framing and croppng the past, but Terman comes back to the importance of time present--our only real paradise. --The Laurel Review.


Review: City Paper Pittsburgh


Personal experience acquires the Monumentality mythology....

Here is a resolution that shifts between history and modernity,

between old and new conceptions of Judaism, binding the generations." --Prairie Schooner https://muse.jhu.edu/article/203208


"The speaker in this stellar first collection seems to carry himself without skin, absorbing the particulars of the human struggle in its many dogged and eloquent forms, and recording it with the capacious empathy of a saint or mystic." --Leslie Ullman, Poetry Magazine. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=176&issue=4&page=36


The Syrian writer and translator Saleh Razzouk was kind and generous to translate a

selction of my poetry, My Dear Friend Kafka, published by Ninwa Press in Damascus, Syria.

Proud to transcribe my sister-in-law Susan Terman's stories passed down from her mother--who grew up in Poland, survived the Holocaust, and made a rich life for herself and her family-- into poems in this documentary/oral history.

4

Translated by Saleh Razzouk and Philip Terman. With Echos of Whitman and Rimboud, a Syrian beat, Riad Saleh Hussein’s surreal embullience stands against dry dictators and there generous cemeteries. In his expansive poems, he fufills his wise to “build a room/Enough for a thousand friends.” --Philip Metres

Chapbooks

Portrait Poems: Philip Terman with James Stewart Drawings and Etchings

Handsewn books with the artist James Stewart and bookmaker Susan Frakes

Like a Bird Entering a Window and Leaving Through Another Window

The Four Seasons

Among the Scribes Out and Back Press

Multimedia Phil

The Silence Flowering Its Birdsong: A Song Cycle.  Music by Brent Register, Text by Philip Terman. Brent Register: English horn, Paula Amrod, Piano, Bryan Register:  Tenor. Performed at Clarion University, November 10, 2012.

Continue Watching...

Jazz Poetry Concert. with jazz band The Barkeyville Triangle, November 4, 2012.  Lincoln Hall, Foxburg.  Philip Terman, poet.  Mark DeWalt, keyboards, Dave Kana, sax, Orion Jenkins, didgeridoo and percussion.

If you enjoy this, here's more: Jazz Poetry

News & Events

Join us for the Bridge Lit Fest!


https://​www.bridgeliteraryartscent​er.org/lit-fest.html

Poetry Coaching

I provide services that can assist in a writer's creative writing endeavors.  I work primarily with poetry and the creative nonfiction essay, tailoring feedback to the needs and goals of each participant.  I'll provide editorial and critical feedback that facilitates the writer's specific level of  experience--from the beginning to more advanced writer, from individual pieces to full-length manuscripts. Combining careful and close feedback with in-depth conversations about each work, our sessions will include recommendations of model readings (both creative and genre-based essays).  Our sessions can take place in-person or on Zoom.     


We'll begin with a 'get acquainted' initial session and have a conversation about a writing sample of work for each of us to determine if we wish to work together further.  If so, we can meet as often as the participant writer wishes, from one session to a semester's worth (or more). My goal is to connect with writers to help develop their strength at all levels of the writing experience.


Testimonies:


"Phil’s coaching has has an immediate and tangible impact on my writing practice. Our discussions have helped with generating new poems as well as revising past work. "  Patricia Thrushart, author of many books of poetry and nonfiction


"I've worked with Phil on two poetry collections, including my newest book, Journey Bread. Phil is the perfect "second set of poetic eyes" whose own work I greatly admire and whose opinion I trust. He has the rare ability to step aside and focus his own poetic intelligence on supporting another poet's sensibility and vision. He has an unerring ear, an intuitive sense of the heart of a poem, an immense familiarity with poetic forms and styles, and an invaluable willingness to say what is not working (as well as what is). 


--Ruth Thompson, author of “Journey Bread” (2024), Quickwater Oracles, Whale Fall & Black Sage, Crazing, Woman With Crows, and Here Along Cazenovia Creek.


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Philip Terman

email: TCermanp1@gmail.com

Contact: termanp1@gmail.com