Tom Berman

Poet & Microbiologist ~

Tom Berman is a scientist and professor in Aquatic Microbiology. Athough most publications to date have been scientific - now and again he has had poems appear in various publications.

Tom Berman grew up and attended school in Glasgow, Scotland. He arrived there aged 5 from Czechoslovakia with the Kindertransport in 1939.He received further education in the U.S. at Rutgers University and at M.I.T. He is married with three daughters, six granddaughters, a grandson and two mongrel dogs.

Writing poetry has not come simply for me even though I started out with the advantage of a sound Scottish education. That meant being extensively exposed to the English classics including the contents of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. Thus, I was taught to write and to appreciate the English language at a young and vulnerable age. Like many youngsters, I scribbled purportedly “deep and profound” lines as an adolescent, like most, I then abandoned efforts to express myself in verse for many a long year. Then along came the computer; suddenly the technical part of writing, and rewriting and shifting and cutting and pasting became so easy. One day, I looked out some of the scraps of scribble that I had long since stuffed into an old envelope and began to type them out on the computer. "Behold a poet is come amongst us!" Shortly thereafter I heard of “Voices”, a group of poets writing in English in Israel. “Voices” aficionados meet monthly in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. I began to attend the meetings of the latter group and was “hooked”. That was about 8 years ago and I suppose that I’ve been writing sporadically ever since.

Quote:
"When up they gat an' shook their lugs,
Rejoic'd they werena men but dugs."

The Twa Dugs - Robert Burns