Nicole Robinson.
Nicole Robinson is the author of the collection of poems, Without a Field Guide (Unbound Edition Press). Her recent poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Fourth River, Great River Review, Grist, Literary Imagination. The Louisville Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Ashland University and certification in narrative medicine from Columbia University. Robinson is the recipient of an Individual Excellence Award for poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Currently serving as the narrative medicine coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital, she resides in Ohio.
Photo by Mark. J Edwards
Nicole Robinson’s debut collection, Without a Field Guide, combines lyric intensity with narrative sweep. This poet attends to the bare reality of trauma and its aftermath, the challenge of navigating life “…without a field guide to identify / who I am or where I’m flying.” But if these poems focus on an individual healing process, they also surprise with their wide variety of subjects and tones, as with their depiction of a contemporary America marked by “reactionary blisters” as well as subtle beauties. At the center of the collection lies this poet’s unsentimental yet deeply joyful regard for the natural world that she portrays with vivid originality. Immersing herself and her reader in this ecology, Robinson ultimately returns to the human world with a new, hard-won tenderness.
Praise for Without a Field Guide
… elegant, understated, finely wrought. Nicole Robinson explores trauma with a stunningly deft touch and enormous heart.
Ellen Bass, Author of Indigo
There is a spine of light which runs through this book …
Dorianne Laux, Author of Only as the Day is Long
