Almanac Poetry: No Straight Lines – Robyn Black
The Footy Almanac welcomes well known Goulburn Valley poet Robyn Black to our website.
Robyn’s collection No Straight Lines is available from Ginninderra Press.
Poet David Kelly writes:
No Straight Lines is a book of warm, but never soggy, poems. It is a book where empathy shines. Robyn Black cares about the outsiders of our society. She cares about the natural environment as well, but not in a gushy ‘isn’t it lovely’ way. She appreciates the harshness, the brutality out there. The poems about her family, dealing with elderly mental deterioration, are especially impressive. Tightly written, with occasional surprising twists, the poems in No Straight Lines will fly arrow straight into the heart and mind of any reader with half a soul.
Details for the purchase of No Straight Lines can be found HERE.
More poetry from Almanac Poetry can be read HERE
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About
Robyn Black is a poet, memoirist and short story writer who has twice won the Open Poetry section of the Joseph Furphy prize and then annually judged this section of the Award until it ceased in 2019. She is the co-ordinator of the new Furphy Literary Award ($15,000 1st Prize), an annual award which commenced in 2020. She also judges the Furphy Literary Award Youth Poetry section. Former president of the Goulburn Valley Writers Group Inc., she is also a former editor of Tamba Magazine and has been published in a number of literary magazines including Tamba, Ripples, The Wild Goose, Regime Books and The Australian Writer as well as on the Australia Poetry website. Robyn has enjoyed a varied experience in connecting locally with literary pursuits including being involved with the former Country Festival of Writing (which ran for 10 years in Shepparton); literary workshops; poetry sessions in local primary schools; joint ventures with local arts organisations; is an interviewer of writers at ‘author talk’ and literary panel events, including the 2023 Bendigo Writers Festival, and has several years involvement with the Shepparton Arts Festival ‘Breakfast with the Poets’. Robyn was also longlisted in the inaugural (2011) Montreal International Poetry Prize with her poem ‘boat talk’. She was short-listed in the 2016 and 2017 Alan Marshall Short Story Awards and the 2016 VU/Overland Short Story Award for Emerging Writers and has collaborative work exhibited at several local art spaces. She shortlisted in the 2024 Margaret Hazzard Short Story Award and gained a Special Commendation for her short story ‘Old Truths’ in the 2024 Scarlet Stiletto. Robyn is the Regional Ambassador – Goulburn Valley Region - for Writers Victoria. Her first collection of poetry - No Straight Lines published by Ginninderra Press - was released in October 2021.
Congrats, Rob!
Thanks for publishing some of your poems with us Robyn. Congratulations on the publication of Straight Lines. I look forward to getting a copy of it.
Always love how one thing leads to another, and that we have discovered you as a poet in a round about way through The Furphy Literary Award.
Cheers
JTH