NORFOLK, Neb. – Not every poem is meant to discover meaning for some facet of life, but some events, people, experiences or places certainly do.
Todd Robinson’s recent visit to Northeast Community College provided evidence of that as he read poems on topics like alcohol consumption, love, prayers of a widow in church, the weather, country cousins, sobriety, his relationship with his father, Nebraska, work and more – much of it sad.
“I love sad poems, I guess,” Robinson said. “Sad poems make me happy.”
Robinson also shared that he is a caretaker for his wife who has an illness. It’s a job in which he is in “year six.”
One of the students asked him how he picks his topics, some of which were about his spouse. Robinson said he is an “autobiographical poet,” with most of what he writes about true, including his thoughts about his wife and memories from his past.
“It’s really boring to live with a sick person,” he said, “but interesting to write about them.”
The poems he read at Northeast presented some familiar images to Nebraskans, including barn swallows, crickets, skies, cottonwoods, the Niobrara River, the Keya Paha River, taverns, grandmothers and other family members, the sun and specific locations around Omaha.
“I picked a bunch of poems that are Nebraska centric,” said the author of “Mass for Shut-Ins” (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), and “Note at Heart Rock” (Main Street Rag Press, 2012).
His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, The Adroit Journal, North American Review, and South Dakota Review.
All Visiting Writers Series events at Northeast are free and open to the public.
Robinson Reading
Todd Robinson, an assistant professor in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, began his recent Visiting Writers Series visit to Northeast Community College by reading a poem from “Cord Blood,” by Bonnie Johnson-Bartee (left), Northeast English instructor and coordinator of the series. The Visiting Writers Series brings poets and authors to the Northeast campus to read and speak about their works. (Northeast Community College)
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