Mark has a deep background in poetry, having started to publish in the late 1980s, and having founded Scratch magazine and press in 1989. The magazine ran until 1998, and was an early champion of many of today’s established poets including Simon Armitage and Paul Farley. Scratch press published its final book, Headland by Andy Croft and photographer Dermot Blackburn in 2001. Reviewing Mark’s New & Selected Poems, Michael Blackburn noted:
“With his influential magazine, Scratch, as well as his own poems, Mark Robinson was one of the original participants of the airbrushed-out Great Poetry Surge of the 1980s and 1990s.”
Mark has been included in many anthologies including Anthony Wilson’s Lifesaving Poems and Neil Astley’s selection of The Poetry of North East England, Land of Three Rivers, both published by Bloodaxe Books.
In recent years Mark has built on earlier experiences of poetry in public art, which included co-organising Logos, the first conference on text in public art in 1996. As well as his commission for the Stockton Flyer plinth, he has worked closely with Stellar Projects to create and commission text-based light, sound and video works for the Nightfall event in Middlesbrough. These responded to the event’s annually-changing themes, and the site, and have included a long poem marking the return to events post-Covid, and a poem film in the form of a series of Wordles. You can hire the large neon work ‘ALL OF THIS IS SPELT BY STARS”, which was fabricated by Neon Workshop.
He was translated into Bulgarian by Georgi Gospodinov (winner of the International Booker Prize), Kristin Dimitrova (translator of John Donne into Bulgarian!), Nadya Radulova and VBV, who he also collaborated to translate into English.
Mark has published two books since 2014, having avoiding publishing (and conflicts of interest) whilst working for Arts Council England. Some reviews of his writing included the following quotations.
“He is hugely underrated and a real original.”
Anthony Wilson
“. For me, the great strength of his work is the straight-forward human warmth it demonstrates… If you want to get the best of Robinson, I do not think you can do better than ‘My Love’, which is one of the finest contemporary love poems I have read, and exactly as Milton said poetry should be, simple, sensuous and passionate – and economically short, deploying clear images and a sure sense of rhythm and pace: ‘Such a long time ago now, and nothing to be done,/ which is why I bring you fruit and drink and hope.’
Michael Blackburn Poetry Salzburg #25
“More than 10 years ago now I read and loved ‘Domestic Bliss’. I studiously copied it and ever since it’s been displayed in many, many forms, from framed italics to embroidered cushions in every house (and country) I’ve lived in.”
A reader
“One of the astonishing things Robinson continually does is make music out of political and social concerns and observation.”
Rupert Loydell
“His poems speak of the best of England, its industrious past, its still untapped potential, and the dreams of its people, with clear-eyed honesty, compassion, and wonder.”
Greg Freeman, Write Out Loud
“Robinson’s poetry is a fruitful exploration of the tensions between loss of place and taking a stand.”
David Kennedy
“Robinson manages to develop a sense of wider political and social concerns without the intimacy of the personal losing any of its authenticity and power.”
Prop magazine
“Robinson’s poems play for high stakes. They are utterly serious, and that’s admirable.”
Sean O’Brien
‘Painfully funny… we may be smiling but the sadness is never far away.’
London Grip