Elaine Terranova

Updated on Nov 25, 2023

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Name Elaine Terranova Awards Walt Whitman Award Books Toward Morning-Swimmers		Education Temple University Role Poet

Episode 53 elaine terranova part 01

Elaine Terranova (born 1939 in Philadelphia) is an American poet.

Elaine Terranova Elaine Terranova Poet Academy of American Poets

Dialogues elaine terranova

Life

She grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of Nathan and Sadie Goldstein. She remained in her home town gaining her education at Temple University where she graduated in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in English. She also married her first husband Philip Terranova that same year. Twelve years later in 1973, she worked as a manuscript editor for J. B. Lippincott & Co. While working there, she attended Vermont's Goddard College culminating in earning her master's degree in 1977. Her career shifted from editing to education and she began teaching English and creative writing at her Alma Mater Temple University until 1987, when she began teaching as a reading and writing specialist at the Community College of Philadelphia.

She developed a passion for writing poetry and began publishing her works while continuing to teach. Her poems have appeared in various publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares.

Elaine has led workshops at the 1991 Rutgers University Writers Conference, and the 1992 Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. In 1996, she was appointed the Margaret Banister writer-in-residence at Sweet Briar College.

In 2001, “The Choice,” a selection from Damages (Copper Canyon Press, 1996), appeared throughout Philadelphia as a part of the Poetry Society’s Poetry in Motion (arts program). “The River Bathers,” from Damages, was featured on illustrated posters by the Public Poetry Project.

On November 8, 2012, University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House inaugurated the Eva and Leo Sussman Poetry Program with poetry readings by featured guest writers and instructors, Elaine Terranova, Nathalie Anderson, and Joan Hutton Landis. Here, Elaine reads from her 2012 book, Dames Rocket.

She lives in Philadelphia.

Awards

1990 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, chosen by Rita Dove

1992 Robert Frost Fellowship in Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

1993 “The Stand-up Shtel” took first prize in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Competition for poems on the Jewish experience.

2006 Pew Fellowships in the Arts

2012 Pushcart Prize

Works

Toward Morning/Swimmers. Chester, PA: Hollow Spring. 1980. ISBN 978-0-936198-02-6. chapbook

The Cult of the Right Hand. New York: Doubleday. 1991. ISBN 978-0-385-41812-6.

Damages. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press. 1996. ISBN 978-1-55659-105-1.

The Dog’s Heart. Alexandria, VA: Orchises. 2002. ISBN 978-0-914061-90-8.

Not to: new & selected poems. Sheep Meadow Press. 2006. ISBN 978-1-931357-32-6.

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Červená Barva Press. 2010. OCLC 752018800. chapbook

Dames Rocket. Rochester, VT: Penstroke Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-9669177-9-6.

Dollhouse. Somerville, MA: Off the Grid Press. 2013. ISBN 978-0-9778429-6-4.

Translations

Euripides (1998). "Iphigenia in Aulis". In David R. Slavitt, Smith Palmer Bovie. Euripides: Alcestis. Daughters of Troy. The Phoenician women. Iphigenia at Aulis. Rhesus. Fred Chappell, Mark Rudman, Elaine Terranova, Richard Elman, George Economou. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1650-9. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)

References

Elaine Terranova Wikipedia

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