Intimate Interview at The Christal Ann Rice Cooper Website

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Hi All,

I’m pleased to share with you something more than a poem or a story. Recently, I was interviewed by The Christal Ann Rice Cooper Website to speak about my poem, Now the Sadness, which concerns itself with the grief of losing my son. Never an easy topic, but I was honored to have a space to speak about my son, and also how I wrestle with his passing in my writing.

Full interview and gallery can be found here.

Until next time,
Judy

Evening Street Press Now Online

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Hi All,

Happy to report that the Summer 2022 issue of Evening Street Press is now online and can be read free of charge. You can also purchase a copy from the links below. My poem Prompts to Self is featured in the magazine.

Evening Street Press
https://eveningstreetpress.com/product/evening-street-review-number-34-summer-2022/

Google Books
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=jNl1EAAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PA1&printsec=frontcove

Scribd
https://www.scribd.com/document/578736375/Evening-Street-Review-Number-34

Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4F6B6VQ

Wishing you all a nice summer. Stay safe and healthy.
Judy

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Review and Friday Forum

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Hi Friends,

Hope this finds you well. Lots of good news to share with you today.

Firstly, I’m very pleased by and honored with a nice review of Buy A Ticket from Kristofer Collins at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“All of it, though, the suffering and joy, the innocence and experience, are in Robinson’s poems all of one piece, a whole cloth, a brilliant heartbreaking tapestry.”

You can read the entire review here.

Also, I’m happy to report that I will be reading from Buy A Ticket as part of Carnegie Mellon’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s Friday Forum. The forum will take play on Friday, May 20th at 1pm. Learn more about it here.

Thanks for sharing this news with me. Take good care.

Until next time,
Judy

Artist Profile at Jewish Chronicle

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Hi Friends,

Hope everyone is safe and healthy. I’m pleased to announce that the Jewish Chronicle has run an artist profile on me in lead up to the publication of my new book, Buy A Ticket as well as the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books.

You can read the profile here, as well as see me read on May 14 at 3:15pm during the Festival of Books.

Look forward to seeing some of you there.

With care,

Judy

Artwork Featured on Persimmon Tree

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Hi Friends,

Hope you are as good as can be. I’m pleased to announce that my art has been featured in the Spring edition of Persimmon Tree, an online magazine of the arts by women over sixty. (It also appeared in their recent newsletter.) The Spring edition is entitled Forgetting, and there you will find wonderful prose and poems by a slew of talented writers. I hope you enjoy it. Until next time…

Judy

New Book and Events Are On The Way!

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Hi All,

Happy New Year!

I’m pleased to announce that my new book of poems, Buy a Ticket will be published in early spring. Its publication will also be the catalyst for a string of events and readings to promote and celebrate the book.

Here are a few readings that are already on tap, with more to come:

Saturday, May 14
Pittsburgh Book Festival

Friday, May 20
Carnegie Mellon University/Osher Friday Forum

Tuesday, July 26
Hemingways/Whale Poetry Series

Also, here’s the blurb from the back of the book:

This is a collection of poems about life—its imperfect beauty, its poignance, and the forces that propel it forward. Toggling among life stages—from a child’s recollections of school with its “blue-lined grainy first-grade paper” to an adult’s look back through the eyes of shared reminiscence with a boon companion, these poems resonate with a sense of time’s passage, its transience and elasticity. Grief and disappointment compete with an indomitable will to continue despite setbacks and loss. Whether through the eyes of teenage Holocaust survivor, Dora, who gleans the forest floors in her quest to live, or the “jobless-wounded-welfar-ians” who keep on dreaming of the windfall that will make it all better, the human beings in Judith R. Robinson’s poems may be beaten and bruised by life’s hard knocks—but they are not down for the count.

Stay tuned for more information.

Stay safe!
Judy

The Art of Poetry: An Ekphrastic Evening

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Hi All,

Excited to share a poem that was part of The Art of Poetry: An Ekphrastic Evening put on by the Pittsburgh Society of Artist. More on the event in this PDF, including other poems and artwork.

Take good care!
Judy

Ekphrastic Event - 54th Annual Exhibition-1 copy.jpg
 

Why A Stick

based on Woman With Stick by Mary Ellen Raneri

I stand before you in full glory of myself.

See my proportioned torso, my sturdy limbs,

The sleekness of my skin.

My body grew full, well- nourished, beautifully shaped.

I would say perfect.

I flowered in tender, sheltered light.

I was loved. I was protected.

But it was as though I slept:  much was kept from me.

Later,  grown, I  stepped out of my blessed sanctuary,

Awakened into a landscape split by want and rage and loathing,

Suffering of innocents without mercy or  explanation.

Shocked,  cowering, I wished to be other than myself:

A rock, a hill, a river, an island in the sea.

But I thought this could not be. 

My flesh rebelled, turned red with fury,

I dwelt in fear for many seasons .

Only under a  sturdy elm I found a measure of peace. 

The leaves of  this majestic  tree rustled with a message:

You are not  the only creature I have offered succor.

Here is my limb, I give it to you. Take it! Lean on it!

It  is stout, it is strong, it is part of me, and I am  part of everything.

Accept  the tragic  beautiful world as it is.  Take it and walk free. 

IMG-1318.jpg
 

Perseverance — A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey

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Hi All,

Please join us to help celebrate the publication of Perseverance: One Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Poland to America by Lee Goldman Kikel. Via Zoom, Lee will share her father’s incredible journey from the Holocaust to Pittsburgh’s Squirrell Hill, recorded on audiotapes in his later years.

Melvin Goldman seemed to be a typical successful American, living with his family in Squirrel Hill, a multicultural Pittsburgh neighborhood with a large Jewish population. There, he turned his craftsmanship as a jewelry designer into a profitable business and maintained a rosy outlook on life and a generous view of his fellow man.

In the decade before his arrival in the United States in 1950, Mieczyslaw Goldman saw his home destroyed, his family torn apart, his health ruined, and nearly everyone he had ever known murdered in the death camps of the Third Reich. His survival of the years in the ghetto and Auschwitz and his attainment of a somewhat normal life are miraculous. Here, his daughter Lee Goldman Kikel has captured his story from the audio tapes he made decades later.

Wednesday
April 21
1:00pm (EST)

Click here to register for the event.
A Zoom link will be sent the day before this event.

Hope to see you there!

Judy

"Think of Rain" for Poetry Month

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Hi All,

I’m please to share that my poem “Think of Rain” has been included in Shaler North Hills Library’s celebration of Poetry Month. You can read the poem down below, and also read other lovely poems on the library’s Facebook page.

Take good care and until next time.

Judy

Think of Rain

We need not learn
to love the world,
we’re meant to.

Think of rain,
Or speckled birds—
A soaring V of them
Across a fiery sunset.

Think of the nakedness
Of the one you loved
When you were twenty-one.
The perfumed skin, all of it.

Think of a pond full of frogs,
and the sweetness of pears.

Or the Laurels in springtime,
The little waving wildflowers.
Think of a hillside, pink
And tender with them.

Think of a yellow moon, rising.

And your own life,
Think of that.

Questions: Poem and Video at Poetry X Hunger

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Hi All,

I have a new poem, Questions, featured at Poetry X Hunger. You can find the poem down below, or follow the link to read the poem, as well as watch a video of me reading the poem.

Take care,
Judy

Questions
 
What do I know of hunger?
They say the starving dream of food.
I heard Depression era stories
My mother’s painful account: days with nothing to eat.
I confused her with Cinderella.
What do I know of hunger?
They say the starving dream of food.
There were childhood commandments
My father’s admonition: please finish everything on the plate.
There were children in Europe with nothing.
What do I know of hunger?
In dreams I see old lovers, old cities,
I fall from trees and mountains,
Forget exams, speeches, names of others.
They say the starving dream of food.
What is the difference between hunger
And starvation?
A few days, a week or so?
A difference in dreams, perhaps?