Mary Robinson grew up on an off-grid smallholding in Warwickshire, worked in Cumbria, and now lives on the glorious Llŷn peninsula in North Wales where she concentrates on her writing. As a lecturer in English literature she was paid to spend her time reading books.
 
She has had three collections and three pamphlets published and her poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. In 2015 she collaborated with the photographer, Horatio Lawson, on Out of Time which was exhibited at the Friends’ Gallery, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick. She won the Mirehouse Poetry Prize in 2013 and has twice won the Second Light (shorter poem) Poetry Prize (in 2017 and 2024). She was highly commended in the R S Thomas Poetry Competition 2022. She has given several readings at literary festivals and poetry events.
 
Her latest collection is Cynefin (Kailpot Press, 2024):
 

I enjoyed the sensitive awareness of history and the natural world, by turns serious, exploratory, celebratory, and even, at times, playful. A remarkable and far-reaching exploration of landscape and history.

 

Christine Evans

 
 

[The collection] is rich, gently lilting under the surface of the land, the sea, the waves, but is also of humanity, finding its own definitions of how it is to be human on the earth.

 

Alison Lock

 
 

Comment on her collection Trace (Oversteps Press 2020):
 

Mary Robinson is able to slow the world in order for us to see things in all their extraordinary detail.

 

Rebecca Goss

 
 

Her most recent pamphlet is Alphabet Poems (Mariscat Press 2019):
 

The poem hits deep, laying out the landscape of the heart.

 

Shalini Pattabiraman, Sphinx OPOI

 
 

Her work has been included in, amongst others, Poetry Review, The Yellow Nib, Long Poem Magazine, Stand, The North, ARTEMISpoetry, Envoi, London Grip. Poetry Scotland, Poetry Birmingham, The High Window, The Alchemy Spoon.
 
Her earlier publications are:
The Art of Gardening (Flambard 2010) – out of print but a few copies available on the internet:
 

Mary Robinson’s poems wear their learning lightly, but it is deeply there, in each of these engaged and engaging poems

 

Antoinette Fawcett

 
 

and: Out of Time (with photographs by Horatio Lawson) (Westward Books 2015)
Uist Waulking Song (illustrated pantoum) (Westward Books 2012)
(both are signed numbered pamphlets available from the author – email for details)