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Judith Kerman

~ Poet, publisher, musician, artist

Category Archives: Uncategorized

New book!

20 Sunday Dec 2020

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My next collection of poems, definitions, is in press and will be available in May 2021. It is a collection of poems in an innovative form, pretending to be dictionary definitions, organized as an alphabetic palindrome and consisting of wordplay, imagery and bits of memoir. Here’s the first poem, as a sample:

air
\ˈer\\
—noun; verb

  1. Walk out and breathe deeply:
    fresh scent of pine, leaf mold,
    rain coming. In August,
    first drops on road dust.
  2. A lovely song, fresh and light,
    sometimes with variations.
    An aria. I fill my lungs, trying to
    feel my back ribs stretch
    for a full breath,
    an extended phrase.
  3. Put it out for broadcast.
    We need more of it,
    flushing the dark rooms
    where politicians
    plot.
  4. In winter, it bites.

Upcoming reading

05 Monday Sep 2016

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POETS in PLAY: Corning’s Poetry Series | eARTS.org

Featured Reader at 7PM followed by Inspired Open Mic

Hosted by Soul Full Cup Coffeehouse | 81 West Market Street, Corning, NY

 

https://www.earts.org/poetsinplay

Upcoming reading

05 Monday Sep 2016

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Bright Hill Literary Center, Treadwell, NY

November 10 – 3 p.m.

http://www.brighthillpress.org

New book!

05 Monday Sep 2016

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From Broadstone Books in Kentucky.

http://broadstonebooks.com/Judith_Kerman_Page.html

image

Upcoming reading

05 Monday Sep 2016

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image

Caffe Lena, Saratoga Springs, October 5, 2016, 7 p.m.

Also open mic

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Pet Peeve (wearing my publisher/editor hat right now)

16 Monday Nov 2015

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One of the things that makes me nuts when I’m reading manuscripts is pages that don’t end where my copy of Word (or my Submittable feed) says they should. I get the title for the next poem, chapter or story at the bottom of the page, often disconnected from the body of the text. It’s amazing that many writers don’t know about Page Break. I don’t know how you do this on a Mac, but it must be available – on a PC, it’s EASY. No, you don’t use the Enter key to shove the cursor onto the next page. PLEASE don’t do that. Because if my Submittable screen or copy of Word isn’t set with exactly the same margins, the page break won’t be in the right place.

How to do it right? When you get to the end of the poem, story, etc., hold down the Ctrl key and hit Enter. That will force a Page Break, which will work no matter how long the reader’s page is set to be. Carries over into PDFs and makes it easy to do layout (if your book is, as we hope, accepted). But even for reading manuscripts, and whether read online or printed out, this matters to a reader.

 

How to buy my new chapbook

12 Thursday Nov 2015

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Tags

ecology, feminist, poetry, politics

Cover of Postcards from America
Want to read my new chapbook, Postcards from America? Go to my publisher’s listing of the book, which includes a pay button. (It should be on Amazon.com soon, but it’s better to buy from the publisher.) Please go to my Facebook page, Judith Kerman, poet/writer to like the page and  share what you think of the book. Thanks!

New chapbook coming!

05 Monday Oct 2015

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My new chapbpostcardscoverflatook,  Postcards from America (Post Traumatic Press) is expected from the printer this week (today is also my 70th birthday). Keep up with this project, my readings, etc. by liking me on my facebook pageFacebook_icon-150x150.

Another birdly neighbor

25 Thursday Sep 2014

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A big elm near my driveway just died. Guess who came to dinner? I knew pileated woodpeckers were in the area, but never saw one close up or near my house.Pileated This is taken with my new Canon, which has a 50x (!) zoom lens. Hand-held. (Leaning against something and holding my breath 🙂

Diaspora issues

12 Monday May 2014

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I attended an enjoyable and stimulating gathering of poets at the Gell Center in Naples, NY, this weekend. The theme was pilgrimage, which somehow hooked up to diaspora at one point, and it gave me a new idea for the “elevator pitch.” So here’s a new version:


 

America is often described as a land of immigrants. It is less often noticed that America is a land of diaspora. People from all kinds of backgrounds, religious and ethnic, find themselves in an ambivalent relationship to assimilation and also to their cultures of family origin.  We work at finding a home here while also thinking about the old home place (physical, cultural, spiritual) that may or may not be possible to visit. We often feel tugged toward cultural memories that may be heavily romanticized or traumatic or both. One obvious example of this phenomenon is the situation of American Jews.  Although the dominant experience of American Jewish life is assimilation and attenuation of religious meaning, much Jewish poetry takes the religious tradition as a given. However, this leaves out the large percentage of American Jews who are secular and whose relationship to Judaism is ambiguous or conflicted.

Aleph, broken, a collection of poems by Judith Kerman, will appeal to readers, both Jewish and not, interested in the tension between American identity and the other resonances rooted in culture of origin. The book explores an unconventional but not atypical Jewish identity, one that is scientific and secular but yearning for connections usually found in Jewish observance, history and belief. These poems center around ways in which life and Jewishness are not what Kerman was taught to expect. They reflect both real and imagined personal experience, related to Judaism but also to larger contemporary issues and Kerman’s explorations of other cultures as they connect to personal identity.

Kerman was raised in an atheist home with a strong sense of history and progressive politics as part of Jewish identity. She acquired a broad knowledge of both the Hebrew Bible and Jewish culture through reading. In her late forties, she became active in Jewish religious and community life. However, the conventional understanding of Jewishness remains problematic for her, while the tradition of argument, exploration and dispute remains compelling—a challenge faced by all those who still feel rooted in their culture of origin while finding a deeper meaning in the great scope of human experience.


Comments welcome.

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