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The best way is to send me an Email or see me personally for a conference.

Philosophical Ideas, all forms of artistic expression, nature, civil rights, economic justice, tragedy, satire and absurdity.

Doren Robbins' poetry, prose poetry, and short fiction has appeared in over 100 literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Poetry International, Hawaii Review, Kayak, Paterson Literary Review, Pemmican, Sulfur, New Letters, 5 AM, Exquisite Corpse, Willow Springs, and Hayden's Ferry Review. His work also appears on the Internet @ Abalonemoon.Com (interview with 10 poems), Pemmicanpress.Com, Poetrymagazine.Com, Pedestal.Com, Thirdrail.Com.

He has published critical essays and articles on Kenneth Rexroth, Phillip Levine, Deborah Eisenberg, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Charles Bukowski, Thomas McGrath, Larry Levis, Bob Dylan, Carol Tinker, Katerina Gogou, Ellen Bass and Kazuko Shiraishi among others.

In 2008, Eastern Washington University Press published a new book of poems, My Piece of the Puzzle. His other university press collection, Driving Face Down, won of The Blue Lynx Prize (Lynx House Press, Eastern Washington University, 2001).

Robbins has published three limited edition small press books: The Roots and the Towers (Third Rail Press, 1980), Sympathetic Manifesto (Perivale Books, 1986), and The Donkey’s Tale (Red Wind Books, 1998).

His chapbooks include Dignity in Naples and North Hollywood, introduction by Philip Levine (Pennywhistle Press, 1996), Double Muse (Rabble-A Press,1998), Two Poems (Rabble-A press 1996), Under the Black Moth's Wings (Ameroot, 1987); Seduction of the Groom (Loom press, 1982).

Cedar Hill Publications published his first book of short fiction, Parking Lot Mood Swing: Autobiographical Monologues and Prose Poetry in 2004.

A pantry man, broiler chef, soes chef, tax shelter annuity salesman, telephone solicitor book store clerk, and carpenter from 1967-1990, he has taught Creative Writing and English since 1991. He was director of the Foothill College Writers’ Conference in 2003 and from 2006-2008.

Education: Union Institute, BA, 1990. The University of Iowa, MFA, 1993. Two years post-graduate studies in literature, multiculturalism, and criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1994-96.

He lives in Santa Cruz with his wife, novelist and documentary filmmaker Linda Janakos. They have one daughter, Samantha Juliet.



My Piece of the Puzzle can be purchased at the Foothill College Book Store or from various other book stores, online sources or directly from the publisher:

http://ewupress.ewu.edu/poetry/Mypieceofpuzzle.htm

From the publisher's web site:

Doren Robbins’s latest collection is as open and immediate as letters from a friend, albeit a friend who feels deeply the accumulated weight of experience. Suffused with an almost defiant tenderness, the poems speak of love and dispossession and loss, and of the power of memory to resuscitate fragments of our lives. They are at once a howl of finely tuned outrage at the world’s unyielding brutality, which we can at times withstand only by becoming brutal ourselves, and a celebration of the human need to find something that endures—to conjure meaning from impermanence.

Praise for My Piece of the Puzzle:

“These are remarkable, fiery poems. Poems that would urge any poet on, language that tears open reality. I think this is Doren Robbins’s finest book, and I’ve admired his work for a good while. The imagination, its energy and precision, is immense. There’s a delicate observation of even the rawest materials, a tenderness for humanity in all its cruelty, stupidity, and often invisible dignity and grace, that feels to me like his peculiar, original contribution to—well, to the puzzle of what we have become: people, Americans, men and women today, above all those who are “absent,” unregistered, undocumented in both senses.”

—Adrienne Rich



“Doren Robbins grows evermore himself, evermore an original and reliable critic, prophet, singer. His poems are ever richer, combining now unfaltering powerful and tender memory with wisdom. Real wisdom. And he’s writing the best political poems I know.”

—Gerald Stern



“Doren Robbins's poems are both poignantly personal and boldly political. They are passionate and lyrical, as you expect of the best in poetry. He is a keen observer of family life as well as the larger world outside, and a pleasure to read.”

—Howard Zinn


EARLIER BOOKS, AWARDS, AND RELATED BIO

Parking Lot Mood Swing: Autobiographical Monologues and Prose Poetry (Cedar Hill Books, 2004), Driving Face Down, winner of The Blue Lynx Prize (Lynx House Press, Eastern Washington University, 2001), The Donkey's Tale (Red Wind Press, 1998); Sympathetic Manifesto (Perivale Press, 1987); and The Roots and the Towers (Third Rail Press, 1980). His chapbooks include Dignity in Naples and North Hollywood, introduction by Philip Levine (Pennywhistle Press, 1996), Under the Black Moth's Wings (Ameroot, 1987); Seduction of the Groom (Loom Press, 1982).

A teacher of Creative Writing, English, and Multicultural Literature since 1991, he has taught at The University of Iowa, University of California at Los Angeles, Linfield College, California State U. Dominguez Hills, Santa Monica College, and East Los Angeles College. He has taught creative writing, literature, and composition at Foothill College since 2001.

Education: Union Institute, BA, 1990. The University of Iowa, MFA, 1993. Two years post-graduate studies in literature, multiculturalism, and criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1994-96.

AWARDS/ PRIZES

Americas Review, Honorable mention for "Natural History." Judge: Jane Hirshfield. 2004.
Indiana Review Award, Honorable Mention for "Gulls." Judge: Mark Doty. 2002.
Paterson Lit Review, Allen Ginsberg Award, Honorable Mention Prize for the poem "Four Family." 2002. Judge: Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
Pushcart Prize nomination by Dorianne Laux and Christopher Howell (2002 for 2001).
Pushcart Prize nomination by Sharon Dubiago (in 2001 for 2000).
Blue Lynx Award for Driving Face Down. Judge: Dorianne Laux, 2001.
River Styx, International Poetry Contest, Honorable Mention. Judge: Molly Peacock. 1998.
Literal Latte, Poetry Awards, New York. Third Prize. Judge: Carol Muske Dukes. 1998.
National Poetry Series Finalist. Book of poems: Cloth of Cilantro, 1997.
Kathryn M. Morton Poetry Prize Finalist. Book of Poems: Cloth of Cilantro, 1998.
Centrum Residency Program, Washington. Full Fellowship, Writing Residency, 1997.
The Chester H. Jones Foundation, Ohio. Commendation Prize, 1997. Judges: Diane Wakoski and David Bottoms.
Pushcart Prize nomination. Poem: "Beneath the Jewish Music," nominated by Hayden's Ferry Review, 1996.
Oregon Literary Arts, Oregon. Fellowship in Poetry, 1996.
Judah Magnes Museum, California. Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, First Prize, 1996.
The Chester H. Jones Foundation, Ohio. Commendation Prize, 1996. Judge: Wakoski.
Bumbershoot, Washington. Reader at the Seattle Arts Festival, Summer, 1996.
Lane Literary Guild, Oregon. First Prize and Publication, Summer, 1996.
The Chester H. Jones Foundation, Ohio. Commendation Prize, 1993. Judge: Wakoski.
The Loft Foundation, Minnesota. Full Fellowship. Reader in a festschrift for poet Thomas McGrath on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Fall, 1985.

COMMENTS ON DOREN ROBBINS' PROSE POETRY AND SHORT FICTION

On Parking Lot Mood Swing: Autobiographical Monologues and Prose Poetry. Cedar Hill Press, 2004.

Doren's essay-poem-monologues are a riff on contemporary culture, not so much a scream but a sigh, the deepest sigh known. I was going to say what he knows and what he says is shocking. But that's not it. What it is is that he's on the razor's edge, a fully unified sensibility, a vision, a dream everything short of a program. Further, to read his prose is only to know his poetry better, and to love him, this wild radical poet on the west coast.

Gerald Stern

As a poet Doren Robbins gives up the struggle with lineation and the result is Parking Lot Mood Swing, a hilarious, satirical, visionary, beautiful-beyond-all-adjectives breakthrough in poetry. Parking Lot Mood Swing is a passionate political protest linguistic (the mind is a kind of tongue) comic surreal ranting outrage, these are powerful wacked-out poems of our pitiful wacked-out world. I laughed out loud to the empty room all night reading these poems, and the blues lifted from me. Give this book to all our dismayed and depressed companeros! Robbins is one of our great poets; he has been for a long time, but read this! And weep for joy.

Sharon Doubiago

LIVE POETRY READING AT:

http://www.poetry.la/page188.html

"Complex seeing must be practiced."

Bertolt Brecht

"Being calm amounts to a failure to understand one's true situation."

From Susan Sontag's essay on Antonin Artaud

"Art itself could probably not produce the renascence which implies justice and liberty. But without it, that renascence would be without forms and, consequently, would be nothing."

Albert Camus