 About to Disappear, by Robbi Nester, Shanti Arts Books, 2025. Click on image to purchase from publisher. About to Disappear Robbi Nester Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025 https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/mno/NESTER_DISAPPEAR.html The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your inspirations for this book and how the collection came together. Robbi Nester: For a long time (probably 8-10 years) it was just a pile of poems, one of two such piles of ekphrastic poems I have written over the years. I always aspired to make a book of them, but found that this was not as easy as I’d thought. For me, organizing collections has always been a challenge, despite the fact that this is my fourth full length collection and the fifth book of poems. I have also edited three anthologies, and they were far easier to put together because the concept came first, and then the submissions, and over the course of reading the hundreds of pieces that came in, I became quite clear on what I wanted from the books. But manuscripts generally don’t work that way for me, or haven’t thus far. I’ve always had an interest in hybridity, combining different modes of art, poetry and music, poetry and art, but I was making up the rules as I went along, so it was painfully hard. I didn’t have many other models to go by since I didn’t know about them, except for those written by my friend, Marly Youmans. We met at Hollins College (now Hollins University) as undergraduates, and I followed her work, featuring the work of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a Welsh artist who illustrated her books and collaborated with her. I, on the other hand, have collaborated with many artists, drawn to famous images and those I saw online, or ones that were presented as online challenges by The Ekphrastic Review, Rattle’s Monthly Ekphrastic Challenge, and other places. I wrote more and more poems, but it wasn’t till I discussed this conundrum with poet and teacher, Dean Rader, who featured on one of the monthly readings I curate, Verse-Virtual Monthly Poetry Readings, that I got a practical sense of how this might be done. After that, it took about a year of looking for an underlying theme in these poems, and letting that guide me. The key poem in the process was the first in the collection, "Some Assembly Required," which I had written for a competition at Meg Weston’s site and poetry series, The Poet’s Corner. Guided by the image and the poem, I began to see themes involving the pandemic, invention and creativity, transformation, and unmaking. The Ekphrastic Review: When did you become interested in art? How did that relationship turn ekphrastic? Robbi Nester: I was always drawn to art, but I didn’t live in a household in which it was an active part of life. Mine was a working-class family. My parents did not go to college and were not involved in artistic endeavours. My father did not even graduate from high school. I was the only person I knew who aspired to be a writer, though I found out later that there were others all around me who were quietly pursuing similar things. My great-uncle on my mother’s side happened to be a famous British poet of WWI and also equally famous as an artist, but he was tragically killed in WWI at age 26 near the end of the war. My mother and her family were and are very proud of my great uncle, Isaac Rosenberg, and inspired by his example, a couple of my cousins pursued art and music. I am the only poet in the family I know of. I was fortunate to live in Philadelphia, where I could visit the Art Museum and galleries around the city. And wherever I go, I always make an effort to visit local art museums. This interest didn’t turn ekphrastic until quite late, when I was inspired by journals like The Ekphrastic Review, Broadsided, The Lights Ekphrastic, Rattle’s Ekphrastic challenge to write to what I saw in these artworks. The Ekphrastic Review: Is there a process or a way that you approach art to write about it? Robbi Nester: Yes there is. I have thought about this quite a lot, and have found that my method is usually to study the artwork until questions about it begin to come into focus. These might involve the context of the work, certain prominent elements of it (why that colour, this composition, that central focus?) The poem is my attempt to answer those questions. It all comes down to the story. I am a narrative poet. I see stories into things. When I was in high school, I tried taking a studio art class. I didn’t pursue this artistic training any further, but I remember one assignment the teacher gave us—to swirl a piece of heavy paper in different colours of paint and oil, producing a marbled surface. I immediately saw a figure emerging from the patterns on the paper, and outlined it in pen and ink. My method in writing ekphrastic pieces is quite similar. I enjoy doing this with non-representational as well as representational images. And as I have become more and more practiced, I steer further away from what I know about the artist, the period, the work, and allow my invention to take hold. That is what you see happening in this collection. Sometimes the poems are quite the opposite of received views of the work or go against facts I know about it. They are as much about me as the artist or artwork, perhaps more. The Ekphrastic Review: What kind of art are you most drawn to? What kind of art do you find difficult to write about? Robbi Nester: I admire the way Victoria Chang writes poems about geometric or minimalist artworks, but that’s not for me, at least not so far. The Ekphrastic Review: Besides visual art, what kind of themes and ideas inspire your poetry in this collection? Robbi Nester: Science, feminism and female psychology, climate change, biology, creativity and invention, political commentary. The Ekphrastic Review: What is your favourite poem in the book and why? Is there a particular poem in this book that was challenging to write? Why? How did you transform the situation? I find it difficult to choose favourites, whether poems of mine or others, artists, even a favourite poem in this collection. I enjoyed working with all of these images. As I already said though, the first poem in the collection, “Some Assembly Required,” which had been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly as “Watching Pins,” was the one that helped me transform what was just a pile of poems into a cohesive manuscript. It made me aware of something that had been there all along: a theme related to making, shaping, and unmaking or falling apart. The Ekphrastic Review: Who are some of your favourite poets working in ekphrasis? Why are you drawn to them? Robbi Nester: I don’t know nearly enough about who is out there writing ekphrastic books. I see very few. We don’t have many physical bookstores where I live, especially those with large numbers of new poetry titles, and I don’t have a lot of disposable income or shelf space. Even commercial bookstores like Barnes and Noble have closed down here. And the public library, while it does carry poetry books, hasn’t had many books of this kind, perhaps none. And I doubt they will shelve mine, even if I give it to them. The Internet, hosting and reading on virtual series and having connections who are writers, has taught me everything I know about ekphrastic poetry, but I still need to learn more. The Ekphrastic Review: What’s next for Robbi? I have another trove of ekphrastic poems, some of which I like even better than the ones in this book, and next, I must study them and make a book of them. Also, I have a short manuscript of food-themed poems, Every Dish Requires a Death, that contains a small series of poems about some of the chefs in the Netflix shows The Chef’s Table and Street Food season 1, and a full-length general collection, I Have Lived in Many Houses currently seeking a home, and two other general collections with more recent poems I am still actively shaping. ** More from Robbi at The Ekphrastic Review: Glove Model https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/glove-model-by-robbi-nester Delusions of Grandeur https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/delusions-of-grandeur-by-robbi-nester The Locusts https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/october-13th-20151 El Jaleo https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/el-jaleo-by-robbi-nester White Doors https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/white-doors-by-robbi-nester  Robbi Nester.
1 Comment
Karen N FitzGerald
10/31/2025 08:37:42 am
What a fascinating artist. Robbi Nester now has a new fan, and thank you Lorette for bringing her to my attention! Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
WORKSHOPS
Join us on Facebook:
November 2025
|