ATTENTION POETS, FICTION WRITERS, MEMOIRISTS!

STRATFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS A WRITING WORKSHOP

& READING AT THE WHITMAN STAFFORD HOUSE

ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST FROM NOON TO 4PM

Philip Terman will lead a generative workshop from noon to 1:30pm and at 2pm he and Alfred Encarnacion will do a poetry reading. Time permitting, some of the writers from the workshop will be invited to read as well. The workshop is free but pre-registration is necessary since the class is limited to 10 people. For further info please contact Alfred Encarnacion at (856)783-0602 or director@stratford.njlibraries.org

Phil Terman is a retired professor from Clarion University. His recent books include This Crazy Devotion, Our Portion: New and Selected Poems and My Blossoming Everything. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, and Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. He co-directed the James Wright Poetry Festival in 2023, directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center in western, PA, and is co- curator of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo NY.

Alfred Encarnacion’s work has appeared in Chautauqua Review, Florida Review, Indiana Review, and North American Review. He has published four collections of poetry, includi1ng Precincts of the Passion-Dragon: Selected Poems 2000-2024, which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize 2025. He is the director of the Stratford Public Library and organizes the Annual Poetry Reading at the Whitman Stafford House in April.

from “Meeting the Swami”

I looked into the swami’s face.

It was a slow burning fire…

There’s a white peacock where the swami is,

strutting wherever it wants

in its luminary regalia, unaware, like a child,

of the attention it calls to its display.

Against such color the sky, our skins

disappeared. I watch it linger,

until I arrive back to its source, to India,

or to that place where white was created.

--Phil Terman