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Lisa Robertson
Lisa Robertson (born 22 July 1961 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian poet and essayist.

In 1984, Robertson moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where she studied at Simon Fraser University. Instead of completing her degree, she left the university to run an independent bookstore. In 1990 she became a member of the Kootenay School of Writing, engaging herself with their collective, involving writing, publishing and scholarships. Living in France, Robertson translated French works to English.

Robertson’s involvement with The Kootenay School of Writing included connecting and associating with the collectives’ values. The KSW commits its students to thinking, reading and writing alternatively, which Robertson carried into her future works. A major theme of this style of writing is, rather than the text originating the reader, the reader originates the text. Robertson’s writing was different from her other avant-garde contemporary’s at the Kootenay School of Writing during the late 1980’s and 1990’s.

Robertson has taught at the University of California-San Diego, Capilano College, Darlington College of Art, the California College of Art, the University of Cambridge, Piet Zwart Institute, Naropa University and Princeton University.

Life and Work
XEclogue (1993) draws on Virgil’s Eclogues to examine and critique traditional conceptions of nature and womanhood that have become established clichés in the poetic tradition. XEclogue investigates pastoral poetry in the late twentieth century. Robertson takes a feminist perspective and includes themes of iconoclasm and scholarship

Debbie: An Epic (1997) The manner in which she writes is the focus of her work’s poetry calling attention to the writing itself. The reader is encouraged to explore antithesis and paradox. The extreme and radical use of typography serves to create more of an art piece rather than just a written work. The title “An Epic”, is justified by the references to Virgil.

The Weather (2001) is a collection of poetry taking the form of conversational rhetoric. Written to be like a conversation to her audience, between poet and reader, Robertson explores seven sections through the eyes of radical women, and includes weather-like patterns in its cadence and phonemes.

The Men: A Lyric Book (2006) is an exploration of previous classical writers. Specifically, Robertson examines the traditions set forth by Petrarch’s Sonnets, Dante’s works on the vernacular, Montaigne, Cavalcanti, and Kant, who created predominantly male works of the renaissance. Robertson investigates what a female perspective on these men’s works would entail, aiming to dissolve the boundaries between women and men.

R’s Boat (2010) is a collection of six long poems. Critics have deemed this work difficult to classify, due to its wide range of liberties, and Robertson’s background outside of traditional Academia. This particular work explores subjectivity in a style incorporating self-awareness of her writing style and prose.

Magenta Soul Whip (2009) is a collection of verses, essays, confessions, reports, translations, drafts, treatises, laments, and utopias, gathered from a period between 1995 and 2007. It includes poems that delve into the past to explore ideas, and then projecting the past into the future with the use of language manipulation. This creates a ‘whip-like’ effect, which brings forward temporal elements of themes and language into a reflection of the twentieth century.


 * 1993 – XEclogue
 * 1997 – Debbie: An Epic
 * 2001 – The Weather
 * 2003 – Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture
 * 2006 – Men: A Lyric Book
 * 2009 – Magenta Soul Whip
 * 2010 – R’s Boat
 * 2012 – Various Essay Collections: Nilling: Prose Essays on Noise, Pornography, The Codex, Melancholy, Lucretius, Folds, Cities and Related Aproprias.

Influences
Robertson’s influences are predominantly women modernists from the 1920s and 1930s and structural linguistics. Particularly, Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, Mary Butts, Gertrude Stein were of interest. Djuna Barnes’s archaic style would provide Robertson with freedom in writing. Virginia Woolf was also a major influence, including the writers Woolf mentions in her works.

Major Themes
Feminism is a major theme throughout Robertson’s works. The political landscape of the 1980s and 1990s saw an emergence of Neoliberalism. Characterized by a repression of the arts, this political ideology provided a backdrop to much of Robertson’s self-expression. Having forgone a degree, Robertson’s writings were very much about her immediate surroundings, and quite whimsical in nature.

“Wherever I go, I write something when somebody asks me to. And because of that occasional and situated nature of my work, the social environment conditions what I'm writing. And I try to let what I'm hearing or experiencing and researching in my immediate environment enter my work as fully as possible.”

Achievements

 * 1998, Debbie: An Epic was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry
 * 1999, awarded the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry
 * 2002, The Weather won the Relit Award for Poetry (shortlisted again in 2010)
 * 2006, The bpNichol Chapbook Award was given to Robertson for her collection of poetry, Rousseau’s Boat, which also served as the partial basis for her future work R’s Boat.

Reception
Robertson has enjoyed critical success, with many critics commending her on originality and style. Early in her career, XEclogue was praised for her "breathtaking originality". Debbie: An Epic was again touted for being original, with reviews from the Toronto Star calling her work "linguistically and philosophically sophisticated."The Weather continued this trend towards linguistic exporation, with critics from Publishers Weekly calling it "intense yet eccentric research in the rhetorical structure of English meteorological description." Robertson's foray into philosophical gender exploration saw the Boston Review praising The Men: A Lyric Book, saying she "writes both from within and against the tradition-splitting, seeding, and suturing the cracks in each ideational edifice." The New York Times said "Robertson proves hard to explain but easy to enjoy... Dauntlessly and resourcefully intellectual, Robertson can also be playful or blunt... though she wields language expertly, even beautifully, she also shows an almost pagan delight in embodiment." R's Boat was also met with positive reviews, reflecting Robertson's growth into subjectivity with less constraints. The Boston Review wrote: "Robertson evolves a new form and idiom so as to short-circuit familiar representations of self and, perhaps, to imagine new and utopian social relations."