Poet Richard Robbins to Read at The Blue Heron

Tuesday, March 4 | 7:00 pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St.
blueheroncoffeehouse.com

 

Poet Richard Robbins will read from his work The Oratory of All Souls: Poems at The Blue Heron Coffeehouse as part of the Laureate Writers Series. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A and book signing, as well as an open Mic session. This event is free and open to the public.

 

Richard Robbins was raised in California and Montana and studied under Richard Hugo at the

University of Montana. He taught in the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota-

Mankato for many years where he directed the hallowed Good Thunder Reading Series. In

retirement, he now lives in Oregon. His seventh and most recent book is The Oratory of All Souls.

He has received awards or residencies from The Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota State Arts

Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the Hawthornden

Castle International Retreat for Writers, and Willapa Bay AiR.

 

Poet Lee Ann Roripaugh says “Part balm, part prayer, part revelation, the quietly moving and

incantatory poems in Richard Robbins’s The Oratory of All Souls, reveal a poetic voice that is

masterful, adept, and profoundly compelling. These supple poems unfold seamlessly, with the

muscular music of moving water: elegant, clear, fierce. Robbins has the gaze of a painter, with a

gorgeous insistence on image, line, shadow, and light. Here, the mysteries and secrets of families,

the erosions of grief, are made palpable through the shape of absence. Here, the weight of love has

the steady inevitability of a river’s current. In this stunning collection, public and private violence

are interwoven with meditations upon the violence and beauty of the natural world with an immense

and deeply compassionate grace.”

 

Minnesota poet Jim Moore says “This book, taken in its entirety, is truly a great litany. It

encompasses us all. It is moving because it is so inclusive, so unwilling to turn away from the world

as it really is in all its aspects, grief-stricken as well as glorious. The book is a kind of prayer, and if

we read it as such we will come away from it feeling blessed, inspired, and consoled.”

 

This event is free and open to the public. The series is sponsored by the Blue Heron Coffeehouse,

Chapter 2 Books, Friends of the Winona Public Library, and Richard and Sara Ricker.