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 51:4 & 52:1 Spring 2006
Lisa Robertson
Palinodes
The Spring 2006 issue featured a special section on Canadian poet Lisa Robertson. Editor Josh Kotin told us of its genesis:
In 2001, I was living in Montreal—a junior in college, working at the magazine Essays on Canadian Writing. A review copy of Lisa Robertson's The Weather arrived one day—I borrow it, read it, and have been in a state of wonder ever since. In 2004, I began working at CR. At various events, when I was introduced as the magazine's next editor, people would always ask what I had planned, whether I would maintain the standard of special issues. ("The Polish! The Brakhage! The Dorn!" they would exclaim.) I was terrified. I wanted to do a feature on Lisa's work, to convey my wonder, but I had no idea how to do it: how to introduce work without overwhelming it, how to avoid a hagiography on the one hand hand and the taint of a retrospective on the other. I started, tentatively and blindly, by asking a friend from Montreal, Kai Fierle-Hedrick, to interview Lisa. Then I wrote Lisa asking for work. The long poem "Palinodes" was her most significant contribution—the result, I understand, of her combing her notebooks for negative statements.
Robertson's books of poetry include XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, The Weather, and, most recently, The Men (Book Thug, 2006). Long-time resident of Vancouver, she has most recently been living in Jouhet, a village in the Vienne region of France. She is currently the Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley, and will read at the University of Chicago this fall.
[KM, 2006]
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