Poetry. Verses, essays, confessions, reports, translations, drafts, treatises, laments and utopias, 1995-2007. Collected by Elisa Sampedrin. Lisa Robertson's poems both court and cuckold subjectivity by unmasking its fundament of sex and hesitancy, the coil of doubt in its certitude. Reading her laments and utopias, we realize that, in any she and a she's assumption of thinking, language--whiplike--casts ahead of itself a fortuitous form. The form brims here pleasurably with dogs, movie stars, broths, painting's detritus, Latin, and pillage. We recognize our grand, saddened century. Editor Elisa Sampedrin says, "Every time I found a poem of hers, she saved me writing one. She gave volume to my intervals. I kept looking. I radiated. I made requests. I found other Lisa Robertsons and rejected them: she is not a flight attendant, not a cheerleader or home shopping host. She is chagrin's first companion, error. When I find her in person, I'll engage her in fisticuffs."
About the author: Lisa Robertson (born on July 22 1961) in Toronto is a Canadian poet who currently lives in Oakland. 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, Liz Magor, Allyson Clay, Kathy Slade, and Hadley+Maxwell, among others. She has also written on architecture and sites in British Columbia, such as New Brighton Park and Value Village. Robertson contributed the "Beneath the Pavilions" column to 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, Lorine Niedecker, Pauline Reage, Michele Bernstein 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
Reviews:
http://www.thirdfactory.net/attentionspan2009-freq.html
http://ampersandbooks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/lisa-robertson%E2%80%99s-magenta-soul-whip/
http://www.prairiefire.ca/reviews/robertson_magenta.html
http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=6538
http://www.eyeweekly.com/books/article/52376
http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_3/review/critchley.html
http://telegraph-books.net/mondayarchive/audio/090307-lisa-robertson.mp3
