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Tangled & Cleft
Matt Robinson’s poetry considers daily life with the lens zoomed all the way in, magnifying the finest grains of detail. Whether he’s writing about the New Year’s Day hangover, perfectly mown lawns, the ampersand on a wedding invitation, beer league hockey or the shattering of a deceased parent’s casserole dish, Robinson susses out the seemingly innocuous web of relationships that give the domestic its complexity.
- GenresPoetry
48 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
2 people want to read
About the author
Matt Robinson
9 books26 followersMATT ROBINSON lives in Halifax, NS with his family.
Publications include Tangled & Cleft (Gaspereau Press, 2021), Against (Gaspereau Press, 2018), The Telephone Game (Baseline Press, 2017), Some Nights It's Entertainment; Some Other Nights Just Work (Gaspereau, 2016), a fist made and then un-made (Gaspereau, 2013), which was short-listed for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, as well as the full-length collections Against the Hard Angle (ECW, 2010), no cage contains a stare that well (ECW, 2005), how we play at it: a list (ECW, 2002), and A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking (Insomniac, 2000), which was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the ReLit Award for Poetry. Robinson has won the Grain Prose Poetry Prize, the Petra Kenney Award, and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, among others.
His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The New Canon, Breathing Fire 2, Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, Exact Fare Only 2, Mess: The Hospital Anthology, and Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land. His poem ‘The Grain Elevators’ has been adapted into a short film produced and directed by Megan Wennberg and screened at both the Halifax Independent Filmmakers’ Festival and the Atlantic Film Festival.
He works as the Director – Housing & Conference Services at Saint Mary’s University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 3, 2022
This poetry collection is a subterfuge of hidden and double and triple meanings paired with a half glass of cool, dark bitter beer on the table beside you.
Matt Robinson's poems make you stop and ask yourself if you're sure you know what that word means, until you find yourself rummaging for a dictionary. In fact, I strongly suggest it for the first of the collection's poem against the dog's passing, where Robinson does his damndest to describe all the different indescribable ways loss can feel after.
I read the poem Against the New Year's Day Hangover shortly after the New Year much to my amusement. The new year does indeed feel weaponized, a tenous rhetoric pugnaciously weighing the peos and cons ofbthr eyes' new-found, ad hoc focus on what passes for promise.
The verses from Robinson delight me as he finds new ways to describe old things, twisting and turning and subverting meaning until that simple moment in a day contains multitudes, like how a once-connected thumb was dislocated and now aches.
Cat made me laugh at how well-described the antics of a feline could be, and how their "zoomies" and blood thirst produce a lot of organic waste to dispose of.
The magic in these poems is how Robinson takes one moment or one feeling and breaks it down into everything encompassing that moment. In "Marriage", the scowl on his face when he realizes his partner has left coffee pods on the counter in his way and all he wants is a chicken sandwich while he "forgets" all his own bad habits with keeping things clean and then also somehow yearning for her when she quietly moves from one room to another, yawning and humming.
Some of the poems take you right into the things that you don't want to examine too much. Against the goddamn MCL made me all too aware of my own sore knee, much more aware of how it would feel to be an athlete done in by poor scaffolding. Nostalgia talks about the taste in the back of your throat when viewing a relationship back in its beginning and what's still left to ruin.
Many of Robinson's poems are against something, whether it's a Zamboni or nostalgia or the AR-15 or the New Years Day hangover, but even in that language, you have to really think if he's against the moment or if he's fighting against it, or if he's leaning against the moment as if leaning into a memory and describing what he finds.
Against Ending was written for Gord Downie, which the poet remembers as the final concert and encore then eventual silence. I remember Gord Downie swearing loudly, his rage and fear bursting out all at once. The kindest thing Robinson could have given me as a poet is the reminder of the encore sending Downie away.
If you're looking for an easy to get into poetry collection, this isn't it. It requires you to think and feel all at the same time as learning something new about a word or moment you thought you had already figured out.
Matt Robinson's poems make you stop and ask yourself if you're sure you know what that word means, until you find yourself rummaging for a dictionary. In fact, I strongly suggest it for the first of the collection's poem against the dog's passing, where Robinson does his damndest to describe all the different indescribable ways loss can feel after.
I read the poem Against the New Year's Day Hangover shortly after the New Year much to my amusement. The new year does indeed feel weaponized, a tenous rhetoric pugnaciously weighing the peos and cons ofbthr eyes' new-found, ad hoc focus on what passes for promise.
The verses from Robinson delight me as he finds new ways to describe old things, twisting and turning and subverting meaning until that simple moment in a day contains multitudes, like how a once-connected thumb was dislocated and now aches.
Cat made me laugh at how well-described the antics of a feline could be, and how their "zoomies" and blood thirst produce a lot of organic waste to dispose of.
The magic in these poems is how Robinson takes one moment or one feeling and breaks it down into everything encompassing that moment. In "Marriage", the scowl on his face when he realizes his partner has left coffee pods on the counter in his way and all he wants is a chicken sandwich while he "forgets" all his own bad habits with keeping things clean and then also somehow yearning for her when she quietly moves from one room to another, yawning and humming.
Some of the poems take you right into the things that you don't want to examine too much. Against the goddamn MCL made me all too aware of my own sore knee, much more aware of how it would feel to be an athlete done in by poor scaffolding. Nostalgia talks about the taste in the back of your throat when viewing a relationship back in its beginning and what's still left to ruin.
Many of Robinson's poems are against something, whether it's a Zamboni or nostalgia or the AR-15 or the New Years Day hangover, but even in that language, you have to really think if he's against the moment or if he's fighting against it, or if he's leaning against the moment as if leaning into a memory and describing what he finds.
Against Ending was written for Gord Downie, which the poet remembers as the final concert and encore then eventual silence. I remember Gord Downie swearing loudly, his rage and fear bursting out all at once. The kindest thing Robinson could have given me as a poet is the reminder of the encore sending Downie away.
If you're looking for an easy to get into poetry collection, this isn't it. It requires you to think and feel all at the same time as learning something new about a word or moment you thought you had already figured out.
October 8, 2021
Though I recognized a couple of these pieces from previous works, once more Matt delivers thoughtful and often unapologetic lines that tickle the mind and fill the senses. This small collection laid out those little moments of loss, of rising, of the mundane turned sacred and the everyday in a way that made me smile and frown on equal turns. Well worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews