Ben Robinson
@bengymen.bsky.social
220 followers 160 following 18 posts
poet / musician / librarian benrobinson.work
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bengymen.bsky.social
"What distinguishes her poetry is the skill with which she deploys her technique, the intelligence behind her offhand observations, and her commitment to hesitation, qualification, and doubt. She is incomparably precise, knowing just how long to let a poem go slack before pulling the line taut."
She Writes about Tractors and Oil Drilling. She’s Also Changing Canadian Poetry | The Walrus
At fifty-eight, Karen Solie is one of our major poets. You might find her on her family farm in Saskatchewan
thewalrus.ca
Reposted by Ben Robinson
sadiqademeijer.bsky.social
These came and I wasn't quite expecting them yet and it's a small oddity of the writing life that a stranger will come to your door and hand you what you've been working on for years.

Here they are among some of their influences, I think they're starting to feel at home with me.
Three copies of my book 'In The Field' in a skewed stack among a Sarindar Dhaliwal print (a row of green pencil crayons), an Escher print (two hands drawing each other), a photograh of Etty Hillesum, another of the Kariokor cemetery, a Kenojuak Ashevak print (red bird plumage).
Reposted by Ben Robinson
cincinnatusc.bsky.social
Sealey Challenge 2025, Day 21: from J-T Kelly's (@j-tkelly.bsky.social) above/ground press (@robmclennan.bsky.social) chapbook More of How to Read the Bible, "Big Day"
BIG DAY

The boy is eight. He knows everything
about Leviathan. If it had been my son
and the Lord talking, every Were you there... ?
would have been countered with a Did you know... ?
And I imagine the Lord would have reached down
and rubbed the boy's head
and poured all the Scotch down the sink
and sworn off gambling
and stopped answering the phone
     when Satan called.
Reposted by Ben Robinson
robmclennan.bsky.social
oh, Toronto poet (and above/ground press, Gordon Hill Press author etc) MLA Chernoff did such an incredible reading last night via Ottawa's riverbed reading series, / @mlachernoff.bsky.social
bengymen.bsky.social
—and after finishing the book, I began to feel that all that was illusion, fantasy."
bengymen.bsky.social
An excellent and comprehensive interview with Sheila Heti:

"we have this idea that the point of life is to keep changing and growing and getting better and more moral and more efficient, and to do things more right and to dress more right and to have better relationships...
An Interview with Sheila Heti - Believer Magazine
Sheila Heti and I met at the Gladstone, a beautiful old hotel in the West Queen West neighborhood of Toronto, on a cold, snowy January weekend. She was warm, friendly, and generous; on her way to the ...
www.thebeliever.net
Reposted by Ben Robinson
Reposted by Ben Robinson
knifeforkbook.bsky.social
"he is fine, fast asleep, bathed in the bubbling
orange of his lava lamp."

Ben ROBINSON benrobinson.work
"A Sensitive Man"
#KFB10 #mains

Thanks to you, we're halfway to our doable fundraising goal! Please support, join us, for a GRAND 10TH! #poetrywellserved
www.patreon.com/posts/mains-...
bengymen.bsky.social
a lovely article on translating titles:

"Perhaps due to this uncertainty, I’ve become obsessed with seemingly untranslatable titles and have catalogued titles—of books, but also of individual poems—which I rank on a scale of translatability."
Poets on Translation: Translating Titles, or The Thief Who Robbed…
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
www.poetryfoundation.org
bengymen.bsky.social
"She was always having a big coffee idea of what to name a collection or one of her characters and it was always terrible; this is perhaps her most relatable aspect. That and her love of stews."

Nothing better than new Lockwood in the LRB.
Patricia Lockwood · Arrayed in Shining Scales: Solving Sylvia Plath
I was under no illusion that The Collected Prose would solve the mystery, or lay to rest the lie, of how Plath was...
www.lrb.co.uk
bengymen.bsky.social
I'm very excited to have some new poems on the way from the mighty KFB!
Reposted by Ben Robinson
itsakirby.bsky.social
Fairy. Spring 2027 @palimpsestpress.bsky.social

Thank you @aimeeddunn.bsky.social #JimJohnstone #KirbyFairy
bengymen.bsky.social
A stunner in the newest @nplusonemag.com.

"The book, whatever it is, would have to be more than good. It would have to answer the question of what I was doing, what I was building, in lieu of a traditional family in middle age. It has to make up for my fatigue and bristly hair and age spots."
Creature of the Late Afternoon | E. Tammy Kim
“Don’t write about me. Write about Korea, about the issues,” Mom has told me multiple times. Dad: “You seem to write about our family when you run out of topics.” I am embarrassed by memoir and simult...
www.nplusonemag.com
bengymen.bsky.social
Thanks for these, rob. A particularly exciting group this year.
Reposted by Ben Robinson
parisreview.bsky.social
“When my husband Bruno’s ex-wife Emilie asked why I would torture myself like that, I gave my usual answer: I don’t do anything for why; I do everything for why not.”

Lisa Carver on a dark retreat in Italy. buff.ly/ykxkPWw
Reposted by Ben Robinson
breachmedia.ca
The grassroots campaign that took on the Giller forced the prize to drop Scotiabank over its ties to Israel’s biggest weapons maker—and sparked a broader reckoning in CanLit.

Josiah Neufeld tells the inside story of the organizers who made it happen. breachmedia.ca/scotiabank-i...
Inside the campaign that upended CanLit’s ties to Scotiabank and Israeli arms ⋆ The Breach
The grassroots campaign that took on the Giller for its ties to the genocide in Gaza forced a broader reckoning in the Canadian literary community
breachmedia.ca