Valencia Robin

Biography

Valencia Robin is a poet and visual artist. Her first collection of poems, Ridiculous Light (Persea, 2019), won Persea Books’s Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was named one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of 2019. A codirector of the UVA Young Writers Workshop, she holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia and an MFA in art & design from the University of Michigan. 

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2020

Hi 

By Valencia Robin

There’s a brother who sits over on North University. 
Looks like James Baldwin in a do-rag. Sings.
Is he homeless? People give him money

POETRY / Summer 2020

First Walk of the New Year

By Valencia Robin

Little wiener dog doing his best show horse, 
jumping one, two, three stumps in a row;
his boy is too busy scrolling to notice, but I smile 
all the way up the hill. Bitter cold

POETRY / Summer 2020

Ask Your Grandmother

By Valencia Robin

why she had six children,
your mother’s mother
who liked math and science,

POETRY / Summer 2020

Sometimes Life Feels Like Daytime TV,

By Valencia Robin

like a game show or some other excuse
for selling toothpaste. Wish I could remember who said that,