Professor Philip Coleman
Professor in, English
Biography
I came to Trinity in 1995, having read for a BA in English and Philosophy in University College Cork. After completing an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature in TCD in 1996, I wrote a PhD thesis on the poetry of John Berryman, which I completed in 2001. My first academic appointments were in UCD as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2002) and in UCC as a Temporary Lecturer (2002-03). I was appointed to a Lectureship in English (Broad Curriculum) in Trinity in 2003. In 2006 I was appointed to a permanent lectureship in English Studies (Literature of the Americas), and in 2006-07 I was first Director of the MPhil in Literatures of the Americas program. In 2008 and 2012 I was Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and in 2009 I was Visiting Professor in the English Department at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
In 2015, I was made a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. I am currently serving as Junior Dean and Registrar of Chambers in College. Research
My research to date has focused mainly on US American poetry and contemporary short fiction but I have had a special interest in the poetry of John Berryman since the 1990s. The culmination of my research on Berryman to date is The Selected Letters of John Berryman, co-edited with Calista McRae and published by Harvard University Press in 2020.
In addition to several essays and articles on Berryman, I have also published the following books: John Berryman's Public Vision: re-locating 'the scene of disorder' (2014), Berryman's Fate: A Centenary Celebration in Verse (2014), John Berryman: Centenary Essays (co-edited with Peter Campion, 2017) and 'After thirty Falls': New Essays on John Berryman (co-edited with Philip McGowan, 2007).
Other recent publications include: Robert Lowell and Irish Poetry (co-edited with Eve Cobain, 2020), George Saunders: Critical Essays (co-edited with Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, 2017), BLAST at 100: A Modernist Magazine Reconsidered (co-edited with Kathryn Milligan and Nathan O'Donnell, 2017), and Critical Insights: David Foster Wallace (2015). I have also published essays in the last few years on topics including the short story and the city, the poetry of Peter Gizzi, Flannery O'Connor and contemporary Irish fiction, Dylan Thomas and US American poetry, the poetry of Maurice Scully, teaching David Foster Wallace's short fiction and David Foster Wallace's engagements with poetry. I have been commissioned to write an essay on Robert Lowell and John Berryman for a volume on Robert Lowell in Context (Cambridge University Press), as well as essays for the Cambridge History of the American Essay and the Cambridge History of the English Essay. Current book projects include a study of David Foster Wallace's "short things" and a book on the ways that philosophers read poems. I am also committed to writing a life of the Irish poet Pearse Hutchinson, which I intend to publish in the poet's centenary year in 2027.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Transatlantic Essayism in, editor(s)Denise Gigante and Jason Childs , The Cambridge History of the British Essay, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp570 - 586, [Philip Coleman]
Old World Shadows in the New: Europe and the Nineteenth-Century American Essay in, editor(s)Christy Wampole and Jason Childs , The Cambridge History of the American Essay, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp96 - 113, [Philip Coleman]
John Berryman in, editor(s)Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Kosc , Robert Lowell in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp140 - 148, [Philip Coleman]
David Foster Wallace and Poetry in, editor(s)Clare Hayes-Brady , David Foster Wallace in Context, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp67 - 76, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, "the ghosts who don't know what year it is": Tracy Smith's The Best American Poetry (2021), Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 12, (1), 2023, p161 - 167
"High Company": W.S. Merwin, John Berryman, and the Art of Poetry in, editor(s)Cheri Colby Langdell , Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century, London and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp27 - 42, [Philip Coleman]
George Saunders in, editor(s)Erik Redling and Oliver Scheiding , Handbook of the American Short Story, Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter, 2022, pp613 - 626, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, "Awing All", Review of Paula Meehan, As If By Magic and Sinéad Morrissey, Found Architecture, by Philip Coleman , Poetry Ireland Review, 133, 2021, p94-98
Philip Coleman and Calista McRae, The Selected Letters of John Berryman, 1, Cambridge MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2020, 1 - 656pp
'Between the "Canon" and "Oblivion": Looking in the Books of Maurice Scully' in, editor(s)Kenneth Keating , A Line of Tiny Zeros in the Fabric: Essays on the Poetry of Maurice Scully, Swindon, UK, Shearsman Books, 2020, pp176 - 196, [Philip Coleman]
Eve Cobain and Philip Coleman, Robert Lowell and Irish Poetry, 1, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, Peter Lang, 2020, i - 270pp
"The Short Story and the City" in, editor(s)Paul Delaney and Adrian Hunter , The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp242 - 255, [Philip Coleman]
"Marriage? That's another story": Reconsidering the Marital Trope in Robert Lowell's Poetry in, editor(s)Thomas Austenfeld , Robert Lowell in a New Century: European and American Perspectives, Rochester, New York, Camden House, 2019, pp145 - 155, [Philip Coleman]
"Teaching Wallace's Short Fiction" in, editor(s)Stephen J. Burn and Mary K. Holland , Approaches to Teaching the Works of David Foster Wallace, New York, Modern Language Association, 2019, pp42 - 51, [Philip Coleman]
'Dylan Thomas and American Poetry: "a kind of secret, but powerful, leaven"' in, editor(s)Edward Allen , Reading Dylan Thomas, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp197 - 214, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, 'Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin', Oxford Bibliographies: British and Irish Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018, -
'"turning words to return a world": on Peter Gizzi's "Pierced"' in, editor(s)Anthony Caleshu , In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi, Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 2018, pp193 - 204, [Philip Coleman]
"BLAST in the Classroom" in, editor(s)Philip Coleman, Kathryn Milligan, Nathan O'Donnell , BLAST at 100: A Modernist Magazine Reconsidered, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2018, pp206 - 221, [Philip Coleman]
"Enemy of the Stars" in Performance in, editor(s)Philip Coleman, Nathan O'Donnell, and Kathryn Milligan , BLAST at 100: A Modernist Magazine Reconsidered, Leiden, Brill, 2017, pp147 - 167, [Nicholas Johnson and Colm Summers]
Philip Coleman and Peter Campion, John Berryman: Centenary Essays, 1, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, Peter Lang, 2017, i - 314pp
Philip Coleman, 'Lowell's Marriages', Robert Lowell at 100 Symposium, , Robert Lowell and Europe conference, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland, May 2017, 2017, , Robert Lowell and Europe conference, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Philip Coleman, Kathryn Milligan, Nathan O'Donnell, BLAST at 100: A Modernist Magazine Reconsidered, 1, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2017, i - 246pp
"Thus he ran from home / toward home:" Influence and Authority in the Poetry of John Berryman in, editor(s)Tara Stubbs and Doug Haynes , Navigating the Transnational in Modern American Literature and Culture, New York, Routledge, 2017, pp180 - 200, [Philip Coleman]
Introduction: "Storm from the North" in, editor(s)Philip Coleman, Kathryn Milligan, Nathan O'Donnell , BLAST at 100: A Modernist Magazine Reconsidered, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2017, pp1 - 13, [Philip Coleman and Nathan O'Donnell]
Introduction in, editor(s)Philip Coleman and Peter Campion , John Berryman: Centenary Essays, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, Peter Lang, 2017, pp1 - 9, [Philip Coleman and Peter Campion]
Emily Bourke, Philip Coleman, Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, 'George Saunders: A Preliminary Bibliography', George Saunders: Critical Essays, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 190 - 205
Philip Coleman, 'BLAST at 100: Centenary Reflections on a Modernist Magazine' , School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, May 2017, 2017, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
"Afterword" in, editor(s)Jessie Lendennie , Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems of Kevin Higgins, Cliffs of Moher, Salmon Poetry, 2017, pp159 - 164, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman and Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, George Saunders: Critical Essays, 1, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 1 - 286pp
Philip Coleman, Flannery O'Connor and Contemporary Irish Fiction: Opening the Field, Flannery O'Connor Review, 14, 2016, p82 - 94
Philip Coleman, Rev. of Tom Paulin, New Selected Poems, Review of Tom Paulin, New Selected Poems, by Tom Paulin , The Edinburgh Review, 2015, p123-125
Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 5.1&2, (2015), 1 - 136p, Philip Coleman and Clare Hayes-Brady, [eds.]
Philip Coleman, Critical Insights: David Foster Wallace, 1, Ipswich, Massachusetts, Salem Press, 2015, 1-322pp
On David Foster Wallace in, editor(s)Philip Coleman , Critical Insights: David Foster Wallace, Ipswich, Massachusetts, Salem Press, 2015, pp3 - 25, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, A Kind of Compass, Review of A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance, by Belinda McKeon , Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 5.1&2, 2015, p123-125
Philip Coleman and Clare Hayes-Brady, Introduction, Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 5.1&2, 2015, p5 - 9
Philip Coleman, Rev. of Theo Dorgan, Nine Bright Shiners, Review of Nine Bright Shiners, by Theo Dorgan , Dublin Review of Books, 2015
Minds Made by Madness? Enablements of Insanity in Modern American Poetry in, editor(s)Meldan Tanrisal and Tanfer Emin Tunç , The Health of the Nation, Heidelberg, Winter, 2014, pp155 - 167, [Philip Coleman]
Writing Between: Hungarian Affinities in Contemporary Irish Poetry in, editor(s)Aidan O'Malley and Eve Patten , Ireland, West to East: Irish Cultural Connections with Central and Eastern Europe, Bern, Peter Lang, 2014, pp87 - 100, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, ev. of books by Harry Clifton, Gabriel Fitzmaurice and Macdara Woods, Review of ev. of books by Harry Clifton, Gabriel Fitzmaurice and Macdara Woods, by ev. ofHarry Clifton, Gabriel Fitzmaurice and Macdara Woods , Poetry Ireland Review, 2014
Philip Coleman, Berryman's Fate: A Centenary Celebration in Verse, 1st, Dublin, Arlen House, 2014, 1 - 96pp
Philip Coleman, John Berryman's Public Vision: relocating 'the scene of disorder', 1st, Dublin, UCD Press and University of Chicago Press, 2014, i - 240pp
, ""Seeking quiddity": Seeing Things in the Poetry of Carl Rakosi"', Maintaining a Place: Conditions of Metaphor in Modern American Literature, 2014
'"Seeking quiddity": Seeing Things in the Poetry of Carl Rakosi'' in, editor(s)Maria Stuart, Fionnghuala Sweeney and Fionnuala Dillane , Maintaining a Place: Conditions of Metaphor in Modern American Literature, Dublin, UCD Press, 2014, pp144 - 160, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, Rev. of Anne Carson, Red Doc>, Review of Red Doc>, by Anne Carson , Dublin Review of Books, 2013
Philip Coleman and Stephen Matterson, "Forever Young"? : The Changing Images of America. , 1, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter Verlag, 2012, 1 - 271pp
Introduction in, editor(s)Philip Coleman and Stephen Matterson , "Forever Young"? : The Changing Images of America, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter Verlag, 2012, pp1 - 11, [Stephen Matterson and Philip Coleman]
"Friend of my Youth": Alice Munro and the Power of Narrativity in, editor(s)Charles E. May , Alice Munro: Critical Insights, Ipswich, MA, Salem Press, 2012, pp160 - 174, [Philip Coleman]
'From Findrum: Pearse Hutchinson in Conversation' in, editor(s)Philip Coleman and Maria Johnston , Reading Pearse Hutchinson: From Findrum to Fisterra, Dublin and Portland, Irish Academic Press, 2011, pp213 - 236, [Philip Coleman]
"On Verse Letters" in, editor(s)Erik Martiny , A Companion to Poetic Genre, Oxford, Blackwells, 2011, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman and Maria Johnston, Reading Pearse Hutchinson: From Findrum to Fisterra, Dublin and Portland, Irish Academic Press, 2011, i - 380pp
'He donat la meva vida al amor dels amics': Pearse Hutchinson and the poetics of friendship in, editor(s)Philip Coleman and Maria Johnston , Reading Pearse Hutchinson: From Findrum to Fisterra, Dublin and Portland, Irish Academic Press, 2011, pp59 - 72, [Philip Coleman]
'Pearse Hutchinson: a Chronology' in, editor(s)Philip Coleman and Maria Johnston , Reading Pearse Hutchinson: From Findrum to Fisterra, Dublin and Portland, Irish Academic Press, 2011, pp1 - 6, [Philip Coleman]
"Are you my general?": revising representation in "Eyes of Zapata" in, editor(s)Cecilia Donohue , Woman Hollering Creek: Critical Revisions, Amsterdam and New Jersey, Rodopi, 2010, pp115 - 129, [Philip Coleman]
"Consider Berkeley & Co.: Reading 'Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way'" in, editor(s)David Hering , Consider David Foster Wallace, Los Angeles and Austin, SSMG Press, 2010, pp62 - 74, [Philip Coleman]
"Hauntedness: Edgar Allan Poe and Chuck Palahniuk" in, editor(s)Helen Conrad-O Briain and Julie Anne Stevens , The Ghostly Genre, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, pp172 - 184, [Philip Coleman]
Philip Coleman, "The Absolute Dust of the Language": Reading George Szirtes, POST: the Journal of Poetry Studies, 2, (1), 2010, p23 - 28
Philip Coleman, 'At ease with elsewhere': Pearse Hutchinson's Transnational Poetics, Review of Miscellaneous works by Pearse Hutchinson, by Pearse Hutchinson , Dublin Review of Books, 1, (5), 2009
'After thirty Falls': new essays on John Berryman, Amsterdam and New Jersey, Rodopi, [co-editor], 2007
Introduction in, editor(s)Coleman, Philip and McGowan, Philip , 'After thirty Falls': new essays on John Berryman, Amsterdam and New Jersey, Rodopi, 2007, pp1 - 10, [Coleman, Philip]
Ireland and the Americas: politics, history, culture,, Santa Barbara and London , ABC-CLIO, [co-editor], 2007
Love & Fame and the Self in Society in, editor(s)Coleman, Philip and McGowan, Philip , After thirty falls': new essays on John Berryman, Amsterdam and New Jersey, Rodopi, 2007, pp225 - 240, [Coleman, Philip]
Introduction in, editor(s)Byrne, James P. and Coleman, Philip and King, Jason , Ireland and the Americas: history, politics, culture, Santa Barbara and London, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp1 - 3, [Coleman, Philip]
On literature and science : essays, reflections, provocations , Dublin, Four Courts Press, [editor], 2007
"I am an experiment": reflections on science in American short fiction in, editor(s)Coleman, Philip , On literature and science: essays, reflections, provocations, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007, pp173 - 189, [Coleman, Philip]
Philip Coleman, William Austin, the Missing Man, The Short Story in English: Crossing Boundaries -- Proceedings of the 8th Interntational Conference of the Society for the Study of the Short Story, The Short Story in English: Crossing Boundaries, Alcala de Henares (Spain), 27-30 October 2004, edited by Gema Soledad Castillo Garcia, Maria Rosa Cabellos Castilla, Juan Antonio Sanchez Jimenez and Vincent Carlisle Espinola , Universidad de Alcala, 2007, pp230 - 240
Introduction in, editor(s)Coleman, Philip , On literature and science: essays, reflections, provocations, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007, pp13 - 23, [Coleman, Philip]
"His eyes remained wide open on his world": John Berryman and World War II in, editor(s)Diederik Oostdijk and Markha G. Valenta , Stories of World War II, Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2006, pp16 - 25, [Philip Coleman]
"Intentional Fallacy," "Expatriates," "Stephen Dobyns," "Louis Ginsberg," "August Kleinzahler," "Samuel Menashe," and "Carl Rakosi", Jeffrey Gray, James McCorkle, and Mary McAleer Balkun, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, 1st, Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 2005, [Philip Coleman]
Coleman, P., "Nightmares of Eden": John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, 10, (--), 2004, p57 - 70
Coleman, P., "The Politics of Praise": John Berryman's Engagement with W.B. Yeats, Etudes Irlandaises, 28, (2), 2003, p11 - 27
Coleman. P., "His character is durity": on Carl Rakosi, Metre: an international journal of poetry, - - (15), 2003, p126 - 131
Coleman, P., "At the end, at the edge": Reading Davie reading Niedecker, Metre: a magazine of international poetry, 14, (Autumn), 2003, p132 - 139
Coleman, P., Against Evangelism: Reflexions on Experimental Irish Poetry and its Critics, Religion Education and the Arts, 3, 2003, p96 - 99
Coleman, P., "The Orgy": Muriel Rukeyser in West Kerry, New Voices in Irish Criticism, 4, 2003, p107 - 115
Coleman, P., "What am I myself here doing?": Revisiting Henry in Dublin, Thumbscrew , 15, (Winter/Spring), 2000, p11 - 16
Coleman, P., "The Scene of Disorder": John Berryman's "Formal Elegy", Journal of American Studies , 8, (May), 2000, p201 - 223
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
'Between the "Canon" and "Oblivion": Looking in the Books of Maurice Scully' in, editor(s)Kenneth Keating , A Line of Tiny Zeros in the Fabric: Essays on the Poetry of Maurice Scully, Swindon, UK, Shearsman Books, 2020, pp176 - 196, [Philip Coleman]
Claire Cunningham, 'The Lyric Feature: A Cradle Song', Ireland, RTE Lyric FM, 2020, -
Research Expertise
Description
My research focuses on (i) modern and contemporary American poetry, and (ii) modern and contemporary American short fiction. I have also made significant contributions in the areas of Irish poetry and modernist studies. My edition of the letters of John Berryman published by Harvard University Press (2020) represents a major contribution to the field of American literary studies, and has been described by Mark Ford (University College London) as "a book that will reconfigure forever our understanding of mid-century American poetry". Following the publication of my earlier books and essays, this work affirms my presence as the leading global authority on Berryman. My research on other key poets, including Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and Peter Gizzi, has been published in collections by leading presses including Edinburgh and Wesleyan UP. My second research strand on modern and contemporary American short fiction includes significant essays on writers ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Chuck Palahniuk to Alice Munro, Sandra Cisneros, and George Saunders. I have edited and contributed to definitive works on David Foster Wallace, including a volume published by the prestigious Modern Language Association. I am currently preparing a book proposal on Wallace's stories and essays for Bloomsbury's Wallace Studies series. Beyond these major research strands, I have published on the modernist journal BLAST and the Irish poet Pearse Hutchinson, building on international research collaborations. I am currently engaged in collaborative research on the contemporary essay with colleagues in Germany, Australia, the UK and the US. This will be my major focus in the next three years, leading to a several research outputs including a book-length study. To date, I have been invited to write essays for the Cambridge History of the American Essay and the Cambridge History of the English Essay, both due in 2021.Projects
- Title
- John Berryman: Selected Literary Correspondence
- Summary
- This volume, under contract to Harvard University Press, will include a generous selection of the US American poet John Berryman's literary correspondence with a wide range of important twentieth-century poets, from W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot to Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Delmore Schwartz and James Meredith. The volume will also include Berryman's correspondence with important but forgotten figures such as Robert Bhain Campbell in the 1940s, as well as his epistolary exchanges with artists such as Ben Shahn and the philosopher/historian Erich Kahler.
- Date From
- 2014
- Date To
- December 2020
Recognition
Representations
European Network for Short Fiction Research
Board of Directors, Ireland Literature Exchange
Committee for the Study of Literatures in English, Royal Irish Academy
Awards and Honours
Elmer L. Andersen Research Scholarship, University of Minnesota (2017-18)
Fellowship of Trinity College Dublin
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship
Trinity College Postgraduate Award
Ireland-United States Commission for Educational Exchange / Fulbright Scholarship
Memberships
Irish Association for American Studies
Irish Fulbright Alumni Association
International Society for the Study of the Short Story
European Association for American Studies
Modern Language Association