Robbie Coburn

Robbie Coburn
Born	Robert Lee Coburn 25 June 1994 (age 22) Melbourne, Victoria,
Residence	Melbourne
Nationality	Australian
Known for	Poetry
Website	http://www.robbiecoburn.com.au

Robbie Coburn (born 25 June 1994) is a contemporary Australian poet.

Biography

Coburn was born in Melbourne and grew up on his family's farm just north of Melbourne's outer suburbs in the semi-rural locality of Woodstock, Victoria, which is a large focus of his poetry. He was educated at Whittlesea Primary School and Assumption College, Kilmore and briefly studied at La Trobe University before dropping out of his degree.

Coburn's first published poem 'Two Lies in Sequence' appeared in Pi O's literary journal Unusual Work when he was 17 years old^[1] and he has since been published in many journals and magazines, including Poetry and his poems have been anthologised. As well as a full-length collection of poems, he has published a number of chapbooks.

He is known for his highly personal, sometimes confronting style of writing. Poet Les Wicks has called him "the best portraitist of Australian rural life since Brendan Ryan".^[2]

Coburn's work is largely drawn from personal experience, such as his struggles with depression, alcohol abuse, anorexia nervosa, and self-harm. He writes frequently about farm life, with predominant themes of greyhound racing and training, family and isolation.^[3]

In answer to the question of why he writes poetry, Coburn has said "It simply isn’t a conscious decision I make to write poetry, but an impulsion that cannot be ignored. Poetry photographs parts of life and humanity that can’t be captured visually, at least in a literal sense. It dissects the hopelessness of being alive and makes it seem to develop meaning momentarily, even if it never actually does. If our most private and affecting inner thoughts and memories, the ones we keep silently at the backs of our minds, were given a voice, it would be poetry. That is what poetry is to me." ^[4]

Bibliography

Poetry collections

• Rain Season (Picaro Press, 2013)

Chapbooks and pamphlets

• Human Batteries (Picaro Press, 2012)
• Before Bone and Viscera (Rochford Street Press, 2014)
• 5 Poems (Donnithorne Street Press, 2015)
• Mad Songs (Blank Rune Press, 2015)
• The Silences with Amanda Anastasi (Eaglemont Press, 2016)
• Scar to Scar with Michele Seminara (PressPress, 2016)

See also

• List of Australian poets

References

External links

• Poetry Foundation profile
• Official website
• Profile in Overland by Peter Minter
• 2 poems in Mascara Literary Review
• Review of "Rain Season" by Les Wicks in The Rochford Street Review
• Robbie Coburn's 'Suicide Country'
• 3 poems in foam:e