Robin Richardson is a Toronto native pursuing her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence in New York. Her work had appeared in Cv2, Misunderstandings Magazine, The Puritan, The Filling Station, The Toronto Quarterly, All Rights Reserved, Dandelion Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Westchester Review and her first full-length collection, Grunt of the Minotaur will be coming out with Insomniac Press in Fall 2011.
TTQ - How would you best describe the differences between the poetry scenes in Toronto to that of New York City? In your opinion is poetry thriving in both locals?
Robin Richardson - Based on my fairly limited experience in both, the main difference between New York's literary scene and the Toronto's is size. Toronto is small enough that everyone knows everyone within a short span of time. I've never been to a reading in Toronto where I didn't recognize at least half of the poets/writers there. New York still has a bit of that community sense but is large enough that there is much more variety in both readers and audience members.
Blue
Blue mountain, blue eyes; the youth’s bluish
humming in monastic fields. Here he sees
the water, hears the humbling quiet of a drop.
Swans, rain-backed, pass like shifting latitudes
East inches over and the Earth commiserates
It’s lost its place.
The youth yawns, not fit for this Pacific
prelude.. Blue words mute, he thinks of black
instead. Shakes a mist from his boot.
The iris of an ocean makes its way through
gazers as they pass, possessed by repetition:
breaking wave on breaking wave.
Round O, open voice of coo as blue birds
pass the clouds from their apparent
likenesses. Weather will not do.
The youth, not merely here, but strewn
in thought across the scene, resumes his hum –
lumbers slumped on whicker-woven grass.
Beyond the field is a forest, further still
plutonic bodies in their orbs. Beyond
the orbs are marble nudes – contrapposto
so the pedestals seem small beneath their feet.
Blue is their demeanor. Fixed figures in a god-lust
huddle. Though the water sings them, swans
renounce their names. There’s no hierarchy.
The youth exits, framed by low-hung stratus.
The scene conspires in his absence: blue.
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