Lisa Robertson

Lisa Robertson (born July 22, 1961) is a Canadian poet. She lived for many years in Vancouver, briefly in Oakland, California, and currently lives in France.^[1][2]

Life and work

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Robertson moved to British Columbia in 1979, where she remained for twenty-three years. During her time there, she was a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which is a writer-run collective, and Artspeak Gallery. Her first book was a chapbook, The Apothecary, published by Tsunami Editions in 1991.^[3] Since then she has published seven books of poetry and two books of essays.

Robertson studied at Simon Fraser University^[4] (1984–1988), then left the university to become an independent bookseller (1988–1994). Since 1995 she has been a freelance writer and teacher. Her many essays on the contemporary visual arts, published in gallery and museum catalogues since the mid-1990s, are collected in her 2003 book Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture.

In 2006, Robertson was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley.^[4] From 2007 to 2010 she taught at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In Fall 2010 she was writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Robertson is a writing tutor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.^[5] In Spring 2014 she was the Bain Swigget lecturer in Poetry at Princeton University.^[6]

Selected bibliography

• The Apothecary (Vancouver, BC: Tsunami, 1991; reissued 2001)
  • reissued (Toronto: Bookthug, 2007)^[3]
• 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 Work 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)
• Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip (Toronto: Coach House Press, 2009)
• R's Boat (University of California Press, 2010)
• Nilling: Prose (Toronto: BookThug, 2012)^[2]
• Cinema Of the Present (Toronto: Coach House Press, 2014)^[7]
• 3 Summers (Toronto: Coach House Press, 2016)

Selected 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," from DC Poetry Anthology 2001.^[8]
• "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." Chicago Review 51:4/52:1 (2006)

Selected interviews and conversations

• "Correspondence" with Steve McCaffery. Philly Talks #17. (Philadelphia: Kelly Writers House, 2000)
• "Lifted" with Kai Fierle-Hedrick. Chicago Review 51:4/52:1 (2006)
• Interview with Julie Carr (The Volta, 2013).
• Brecken Hancock An Interview with Lisa Robertson (CWILA, 2012)
• Andy Fitch with Lisa Robertson (The Conversant, 2013)
• Out-Takes from Ted Byrne's Interview with Lisa Robertson (Capilano Review, 2011)

References

Notes

External links

• Lisa Robertson's piece titled "The Venus Problem"
• Chicago Review special issue (51:4/52:1) on Lisa Robertson (poems, essays, interview)
• Dispatches from the PoetryFoundation.org Journal
• Readings from The Office For Soft Architecture
• Test Reading: from The Men
• Lisa Robertson reads at a Toronto Value Village
• "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.
• Steve Evans reviews Rousseau’s Boat This piece, titled "Solitary and Free", appeared in "Jacket Magazine", #27 (April 2005)
• "Wooden Houses" poem by Robertson in "Jacket Magazine", #27 (APR 2005)
• Review @ Village Voice: 09/29/06 Alan Gilbert discusses The Men
• Joshua Corey discusses The Men extended piece from the popular weblog Cahiers de Corey
• Conversation review of 'The Men' by Melissa Flores-Bórquez and Edmund Hardy at poetry mag "Intercapillary Space"

See also

• Canadian poetry