Lisa Robertson (poet)

Lisa Robertson (born on July 22 1961 in Newmarket, Ontario) is a Canadian poet who currently lives in Oakland.

Life

In 1979, she moved to British Columbia, where she remained for twenty-three years. During her time there, she was a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which is a non-profit society that offers an alternative to the mainstream pedagogy of most Canadian universities.

Although it is not necessarily acknowledged as much as her ties to The Kootenay School of Writing, she was integrally involved in Vancouver's art scene. Robertson is an honorary board member of Artspeak Gallery. She has written on and reviewed exhibitions and pieces by Kelly Wood, Robert Garcet, and Liz Magor, among others. She has also written on architecture and sites in British Columbia, such as New Brighton Park and Value Village. Robertson contributed to the "Beneath the Pavilions" column in "Mix" from 1997-1999.

She co-edited the poetry journal "Raddle Moon" with Susan Clark in Vancouver, and has worked as an arts journalist, a book seller, a copy editor, an astrologer, a guest lecturer, and an essayist. She has written on the work of Robin Blaser, Denise Riley, Dionne Brand, Peter Culley, Ted Berrigan, John Clare, and Albertine Sarrazin.

In 2006, she was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley. Currently she is artist-in-residence at California College of the Arts, in San Francisco.

Work

Her work is a deep questioning of language, history and gender that can help a reader to feel the world as constructed by words in new ways, sometimes uncomfortable, often beautiful often ugly.

She intentionally alters her writing style for each book-length work, although tends to not to stray too far from the form of the sentence and the issue of civic referentiality. Robertson refers to pronouns and self-referentiality as masques or puppets.

Many poets and writers have influenced Robertson. She has mentioned Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, the French feminists, Marguerite Duras, Nicole Brossard, Erin Moure, Gail Scott, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, and Charles Bernstein.

The Weather

One of her best known works, "The Weather" was written following her six-month Judith E Wilson visiting fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Variously described by others as a collection of poems inspired by BBC shipping forecasts, Wordsworths's "The Prelude" based upon a poetics derived from British metereology and its importance in contemporary culture and history, Robertson herself suggests "the weather" can refer to culture-specific customs, the problematic concepts of the universal, sincerity, friendship, the constitution of the English subject, and the historical merging of Romantic conceptions of identity and language.

In preparation for its completion, she researched pastoral poetry, meteorological prose, and Anglo-centric subjectivity, guided by authors like Wordsworth, Reverend Blomefield, Luke Howard, Thomas Forster, Aikin, Aratus, John Constable, and William Cobbett.

elected Bibliography

*"The Apothecary" (Vancouver, BC: Tsunami, 1991; reissued 2001)
*"The Barscheit Horse" with Catriona Strang and Christine Stewart (Hamilton, Ontario: Berkeley Horse, 1993)
*"XEclogue II-V" (Vancouver: Sprang Texts, 1993)
*"XEclogue" (Vancouver, BC: Tsunami Editions 1993, reissued by New Star Books, 1999)
*"The Glove: An Essay on Interpretation" (Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery, 1993)
*"The Badge" (Hamilton, Ontario: The Berkeley Horse/Mindware, 1994)
*"Earth Monies" (Mission, BC: DARD, 1995)
*"The Descent" (Buffalo, NY: Meow, 1996)
*"Debbie: An Epic" (Vancouver, BC: New Star, 1997; UK: Reality Street, 1997)
*"Soft Architecture: A Manifesto" (Vancouver: Artspeak Gallery, 1999)
*"The Weather" (Vancouver, BC: New Star, 2001; UK: Reality Street, 2001)
*"A Hotel" (Vancouver: Vancouver Film School, 2003)
*"Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture" (Astoria, OR: Clear Cut Press, 2003)
*"Face/" (New York: A Rest Press, 2003)
*"Rousseau’s Boat" (Vancouver, BC: Nomados, 2004)
*"First Spontaneous Horizontal Restaurant." Belladonna 75. (Brooklyn: Belladonna Books, 2005)
*"The Men: A Lyric Book" (Toronto: BookThug, 2006)

elected Essays

*"Coasting" with Jeff Derksen, Nancy Shaw, and Catriona Strang. "Telling it Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s". Ed. Mark Wallace. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2002)
*"The Weather: A Report on Sincerity." "DC Poetry Anthology 2001". [ [http://www.dcpoetry.com/anthology/242 Link here for this text on-line] ]
*"How Pastoral: A Manifesto." "A Poetics of Criticism". Ed. Juliana Spahr. (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994)
*"My Eighteeneth Century." "Assembling Alternatives". Ed. Romana Huk. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003)
*"On Palinode." [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_514_521.shtml?utm_source=wikipedia&utm_medium=web&utm_term=LisaRobertson "Chicago Review" 51:4/52:1] (2006)

elected Interviews and Conversations

*"Correspondence" with Steve McCaffery. "Philly Talks #17". (Philadelphia: Kelly Writers House, 2000)
*"Lifted" with Kai Fierle-Hedrick. [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_514_521.shtml?utm_source=wikipedia&utm_medium=web&utm_term=LisaRobertson "Chicago Review" 51:4/52:1] (2006)

References

*Fierle-Hedrick, Kai. "Lifted." [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_514_521.shtml?utm_source=wikipedia&utm_medium=web&utm_term=LisaRobertson "Chicago Review" 51:4/52:1] (2006)
*Kotin, Joshua. "Lisa Robertson: A Checklist." [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_514_521.shtml?utm_source=wikipedia&utm_medium=web&utm_term=LisaRobertson "Chicago Review" 51:4/52:1] (2006)
*Test Reading. (May 2006)
*"The Weather: A Report on Sincerity." "DC Poetry Anthology 2001"

Notes

External links

* [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_514_521.shtml?utm_source=wikipedia&utm_medium=web&utm_term=LisaRobertson "Chicago Review" special issue (51:4/52:1) on Lisa Robertson (poems, essays, interview)]
* [http://poetryfoundation.org/dispatches/journals/2006.06.26.html Dispatches from the PoetryFoundation.org Journal]
* [http://www.chbooks.com/content/?q=lisa_robertson_readings_from_the_office_for_soft_architecture Readings from The Office For Soft Architecture]
* [http://www.testreading.org/recordings.html Test Reading: from The Men]
* [http://www.four01.net/qqgallery/index.php?id=17 Lisa Robertson reads at a Toronto Value Village]
* [http://jacketmagazine.com/22/russo.html "Mostly Experimental: Recent Writings By and About Contemporary Women Poets & Writers"] review of "American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language", ed. Claudia Rankine and Juliana Spahr.
* [http://www.jacketmagazine.com/27/evan-robe.html Steve Evans reviews "Rousseau’s Boat"] This piece, titled "Solitary and Free", appeared in "Jacket Magazine", #27 (April 2005)
* [http://www.jacketmagazine.com/27/robe.html "Wooden Houses"] poem by Robertson in "Jacket Magazine", #27 (APR 2005)
* [http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0640,gilbert,74607,10.html Review @ "Village Voice": 09/29/06] Alan Gilbert discusses "The Men"
* [http://joshcorey.blogspot.com/2006/10/men.html Joshua Corey discusses "The Men"] extended piece from the popular weblog "Cahiers de Corey"
* [http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2006/09/lisa-robertsons-men.html Conversation review of 'The Men'] by Melissa Flores-Bórquez and Edmund Hardy at poetry mag "Intercapillary Space"

ee also

*Canadian poetry