OTTERBEIN COLLEGE PROFESSOR NAMED OHIO POET OF THE YEAR

Terry Hermsen, professor of poetry, composition, and literature in the Department of English at Otterbein College, has been named co-Poet of the Year for 2009 for his book The River’s Daughter.  

Jeff Gundy, author of Spoken Among the Trees, describes the 112-page, paperback book of poems that incorporates riddles and inkblots: “From luminous evocations of childhood and place, to riddles so beautifully, lucidly obscure that they crack my mind open like an egg, to explorations of inkblots and loves old and new, Terry Hermsen’s The River’s Daughter is filled with pleasure, challenge, and nourishment. Hermsen is a subtle, bold lover of both words and the world; he confronts their perils bravely even as he sings their joys.” 

Hermsen has participated in the Ohio Arts Council’s Artists in the Schools program, teaching in art galleries in Oberlin, Toledo and Cleveland, as well as teaching at the Columbus Museum of Art. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Thirty Six Spokes: The Bicycle Poems, and with David Garrison edited the food-poem anthology Taste and See. He wrote the academic books Teaching Writing from a Writer's Point of View and Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds. Hermsen is completing a poetry residence in Chile. He resides in Delaware, Ohio.