Elizabeth Robinson

Elizabeth Robinson's books include My Name Happens Also, Burning Deck, (from which the poem "Electrical Things" is excerpted), and Eight Etudes (a pamphlet), from Paradigm Press. She is currently teaching at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, and was winner of the first Baxter Hathaway Prize.

Working Notes, Elizabeth Robinson:

With these pieces, I was trying particularly for a singingness and fragmentation. I was hoping that (what I experienced as) ellipticism would shove the poignance of my experience out into broad daylight. Though I don't believe my work appears narrative to the reader, I am usually trying to retell an internal story. My poems are generally triggered by some event from my own experience. I will then use the image or word as a point of departure or subversion through which I can somehow make my experience "truer" than it was when I originally (actually?) lived it.