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Philip Robinson is an award-winning poet, writer and activist. In 1969, Philip had an epiphany that to write would be a course of action he wanted to pursue. He tried his hand at writing about things that were pertinent to him and life in general. Coincidentally, when he started to write poetry, he had arrived from New York to Boston and started his undergraduate years at Emerson College. His awareness of his sexual identity as a gay man surfaced. He explored the manifestations of this new layer of self through writing. He continued this cathartic process while in graduate school at Boston College and still does so as of today. Philip looks upon his writing experience as a therapeutic tool he uses to help navigate himself through his personal trajectory.
Philip is most happy whenever he shares his literary self with others through readings etc. He has had his first book of poems, Secret Passages A Trilogy of Thought published in the late 1980s. He is anthologized in The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets edited by the late Assoto Saint, and In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology, edited by the late Joseph Beam. These two particular books were noteworthy as they explored the various challenges these writers faced to be both black and gay in modern America. These books also reflected the affirming power of coming together to build a strong Black gay community. |
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Philip is also included in the following other books: When the Drama Club Is Not Enough, edited by Jeff Perrotti and Kim Westheimer, The Last Closet: the real lives of lesbian and gay teachers, edited by Rita M. Kissen and the Cambridge-based consortium of writers known as the Writers of Colors and their chapbook, Life in Our Own Words.
Philip’s second book of poems, We Still Leave a Legacy, debuted in 2010 and was revised in 2017; it deals in part with the many people who transitioned from HIV/AIDS. A silk-screened version of the title poem is a panel in the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Philip’s third book of poems was published in 2017. In the Trenches: The Voice of A Guidance Counselor highlights some of Philip’s thirty-two years as an educator and guidance counselor for the Boston Public Schools. In 2010, Philip was one of the 25 individuals that received the AIDS Action Committee’s Heroes in Action: Love Hope Honor Award. Philip has been a volunteer at AIDS Action Committee (AAC) for almost 30 years. He is a member of AAC’s Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast Committee, which is the longest-running event of its kind, and will celebrate its 30th year in 2019. Philip had a launch and reception event for his book, We Still Leave a Legacy, at AIDS Action Committee. Philip and his partner, Joseph Jackson, met in 1977 and have been a union since 1981. They are both retired from Boston Public Schools and live in West Roxbury, MA. |