Welcome to my page highlighting my activities as a poet, musician and artist.

 

 
Upcoming
Appearances:
  • Reading, Creative Spirit Center, Midland, MI, May 13, 2008
  • Reading at Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers Workshop/Retreat, July 2008
Recent
Appearances:
  • Latest news: in April 2008, I received the Earl L. Warrick Award for Excellence in Research, one of the two highest awards given to faculty at my university, Saginaw Valley State University. The award recognizes my activities as a poet and publisher as well as a scholar.
  • Plenary speaker, Florida State University's 33rd Annual Film and Literature Conference, Cyborg Science and Virtual Materialities in Literature and Film, January 31-February 3, 2008. The title of my talk was "Standing on the Edge: The Problem of Sentience."
  • Reading, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), November 18, 2007
  • Reading, Grey Hair series, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY, October 17, 2007.
  • Reading, Creative Spirit Center, Midland, MI, as part of Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers' Retreat, July 23, 2007
  • Reading, Poetry Follies, Grosse Pointe Artists, Grosse Pointe, MI, May 25, 2007
  • Reading, Ann Arbor Book Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, May 19, 2007
  • My photo show and mask exhibit, Carnaval in the Dominican Republic, was at A City Studio, Bay City, MI, all of May 2007.
  • Reading, G's Café, West Branch, MI, April 2007
  • Featured Poet, First Thursday Gallery Walk: The Art of Poetry, Bay City, MI, April 2007
  • Featured Poet and judge for Pentangle magazine poetry award, Manatee Community College, Bradenton, FL, February 2007
Judith was absolutely delightful. connected with the audience. was engaging, funny, wise,loud (you could hear her despite competing mics, outdoor noise and rain. lol)..... she was a hit!
                                             from a fan at the Ann Arbor reading, May 2007
My Bio

Judith Kerman is a poet, performer and artist with broad cultural and scholarly interests. She has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press, 2005) and the bilingual collection, Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia ( Santo Domingo : CCLEH, 2002). Her book of translations, A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce María Loynaz (Cuban; Cervantes Prize laureate, 1992) was published by White Pine Press in 2002. Kerman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2002, translating the poetry and fiction of contemporary Dominican women.

Kerman edited the well-known scholarly anthology Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Popular Press). Her scholarly research has often touched on the ontology and moral significance of "the fantastic."  In addition to several papers on "Blade Runner," she has presented and published papers on virtual reality in film; uses of masks, puppets and clowning in folk tradition, religion and film; anthropology in science fiction; apocalyptic metafiction; computer art; technology as an aspect of culture.
 
The first edition of her book-length prose poem, Mothering, received Honorable Mention in poetry in the 1978 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award competition, a national first books competition. A second edition of Mothering, including the related play “Dream of Rain,” was published by Ridgeway Press in 1996, and an expanded hypertext version of Mothering appeared in Eastgate Quarterly 2:2, in Summer 1996.

Kerman has published poems and translations in Calyx, The MacGuffin, Circumference, Chelsea, Visions International, The Hiram Poetry Review, House Organ, Oxalis, Black Bear Review, The Bridge, Snowy Egret, the Michigan Quarterly Review,Earth’s Daughters, Pudding, Moving Out, and other publications. Her poem “Tree Frog Ghazal” won the Abbie M. Copps Prize. She founded Mayapple Press in 1980 (50 titles to date), and Earth's Daughters, the oldest feminist literary magazine still publishing in the United States, in 1971.

In 2002 Kerman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic. In addition to published translations of Dominican poetry and fiction, her video documentary and photographic exhibit, Carnaval in the Dominican Republic, has had several conference, public library and gallery showings.

A Jewish Buddhist Quaker Feminist Clown in passionate pursuit of the Cheshire Cat called "Truth,” she is halfway through a phased transition out of university administration and teaching at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.

For a high-resolution copy of the photo above, click here

Books of Poems and Translations
  Publications in Periodicals and Anthologies
  Readings, Performances and Exhibitions

Honors & Awards

My collection, Star-Nosed Mole, was a finalist (top 20) in the 2008 Green Rose Prize competition at New Issues Press.
Editor, Designer
& Publisher:		 Mayapple Press, an independent literary press with a special interest in work by women; Great Lakes, Caribbean and Jewish literature, science fiction poetry, and translations
Conference
Coordinator:		 Conceived, initiated and coordinated Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers’ Retreat, Saginaw Valley State University, July 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.
  Scholarly Activity
My work online:
  • A nice article about Earth's Daughters magazine, which I founded in 1971, can be found at Generation, the University of Buffalo's undergrad magazine. The interview took place when I was in Buffalo for my reading in October 2007.
  • One of my poems was published in the Buffalo News the week before I read there in October 2007. It's online now.
  • Two of my more experimental multilingual poems, in Mad Hatter's Review in July 2007.
  • Two poems appeared in Cezanne's Carrot, Vernal Equinox (Spring 2006)
  • A poem appeared in Umbrella in Winter 2006.
  • Three poems appeared in Poemeleon in 2005.
  • Recordings of my Michigan State University reading, November 2002.
  • A suite of poems is included in Mother Millennium website developed by Carolyn Guyer.
  • A suite of poems is included in Ylem hypertext project, Private Loves/Public Opera, which was also exhibited at San Francisco Art Institute, opening in December 1996.

Extra added
attractions:
  • My 24-minute ethnographic documentary video, Carnaval in the Dominican Republic, was featured as an installation at the second annual Hell's Half Mile Film Festival in Bay City, MI, in October 2007.