Robin Francis Blaser (May 18, 1925 – May 7, 2009) was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada. Personal background Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966, joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; after taking early retirement in the 1980s, he held the position of professor emeritus. He lived in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. In June 1995, for Blaser's 70th birthday, a conference was held in Vancouver to pay tribute to his contribution to Canadian poetry. The conference, known as the "Recovery of the Public World" (a phrase borrowed from Hannah Arendt), was attended by poets from around the world, including Canadian poets Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, Phyllis Webb, George Bowering, Fred Wah, Stan Persky and Daphne Marlatt; and poets who reside in the United States, including Michael Palmer and Norma Cole (who was born in Canada, subsequently migrating to San Francisco). Blaser was also well known as the editor of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which includes Blaser's essay, The Practice of Outside. The 1993 publication The Holy Forest represents his collected poems to that date. In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize. Blaser won the Prize itself in 2008. Bibliography Poetry The Moth Poem, 1964 Les Chimères: Translations of Nerval for Fran Herndon, 1969 Cups, 1968 Image Nations 1-12 & The Stadium of the Mirror, 1974 Image Nations 13 & 14, Luck Unluck Oneluck, Sky-stone, Suddenly, Gathering, 1975 Harp Trees, 1977 Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse, 1981 Syntax, 1983 The Faerie Queene and The Park, 1987 Pell Mell, 1988 The Holy Forest, 1993 Nomad, 1995 Wanders, with Meredith Quartermain, 2002 The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, 2007 (winner of the 2008 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize) Essays The Fire, 1974 The Metaphysics of Light, 1974 The Practice of Outside, 1975 The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead, 1983 My Vocabulary Did This To Me, 1987 Poetry and Positivisms, 1989 The Elf of It, 1992 The Recovery of the Public World and Among Afterthoughts on This Occasion, 1993