Robin Blaser

Robin Francis Blaser was an American-born Canadian playwright, poet, and translator.

Personal background

Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966, joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; after taking early retirement in the 1980s, he held the position of professor emeritus. He lived in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia.
In June 1995, for Blaser's 70th birthday, a conference was held in Vancouver to pay tribute to his contribution to Canadian poetry. The conference, known as the "Recovery of the Public World", was attended by poets from around the world, including Canadian poets Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, Phyllis Webb, George Bowering, Fred Wah, Stan Persky and Daphne Marlatt; and poets who reside in the United States, including Michael Palmer and Norma Cole.
Blaser was also well known as the editor of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which includes Blaser's essay, The Practice of Outside. The 1993 publication The Holy Forest represents his collected poems to that date.
In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize. Blaser won the Prize itself in 2008.

The Moth Poem
Les Chimères: Translations of Nerval for Fran Herndon
Cups
Image Nations 1-12 & The Stadium of the Mirror
Image Nations 13 & 14, Luck Unluck Oneluck, Sky-stone, Suddenly, Gathering
Harp Trees
Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse
Syntax
The Faerie Queene and The Park
Pell Mell
The Holy Forest, edited Stan Persky & Michael Ondaatje
Nomad
Wanders, with Meredith Quartermain
The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, revised and expanded edition, edited Miriam Nichols.

The Fire, 1967
The Stadium of the Mirror, 1974
The Practice of Outside, 1975
The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead, 1983
My Vocabulary Did This To Me, 1987
Poetry and Positivisms, 1989
The Elf of It, 1992
The Recovery of the Public World and Among Afterthoughts on This Occasion, 1993
Here Lies the Woodpecker Who Was Zeus, 1995Bach's Belief
Thinking about Irreparables, a talk
The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser, edited Miriam Nichols
The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography, ed. Miriam Nichols.