Elizabeth Robinson : part one

Elizabeth Robinson is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Apprehend, a winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Pure Descent, a winner of the National Poetry Series (and the late Sun & Moon book).  Her mixed genre meditation On Ghosts (Solid Objects) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.  Ahsahta Press will publish Vulnerability Index in 2019.  With Jennifer Phelps, Robinson co-edited the critical anthology Quo Anima: spirituality and innovation in contemporary women’s poetry, forthcoming any day from University of Akron Press.

What are you working on?

For a long time, I felt I wasn’t writing very much, maybe not writing effectively.

I’ve been going through many life transitions and also working very hard at my day job with homeless individuals.   At a moment when things settled a bit, I found that I had actually been writing quite a lot and I suddenly have four complete manuscripts and a bunch of nonfiction.  So it is a time of taking stock: looking at what I’ve written to see who I’ve become and where that might be taking me.  One manuscript, Vulnerability Index (which will be published in the coming year by Ahsahta), is about my work with people who are living on the street and it feels very different from my previous writing—much more narrative and very often comprised of direct quotation.  I’m nervous that I might not be honoring my conversation partners fully enough, that I’m clumsy with this more direct kind of writing.  And I am trying to learn how to translate my way of thinking from poetry to prose in the nonfiction work, which is also about people experiencing homelessness.  Somewhere in there I’m also trying to get back to writing reviews, partly because reviewing feels like such a good mode of participation in community and also because I learn so much when I review a book.